Small Mammal Communities Reveal Increasing Species Loss Along a Disturbance Gradient in South-Eastern Liberia

Abstract

This study presents new baseline data on the small mammal assemblage of the Dugbe region of south-eastern Liberia. Sherman live-traps and pitfall traps were deployed to investigate patterns of species richness across major habitat types, and to assess the influence of a gradient of anthropogenic disturbance on beta (β) diversity turnover and nestedness. We show that while β-turnover accounts for greater total β-diversity, β-nestedness increased with disturbance. These findings highlight the value of understudied small mammal communities as biological metrics of environmental change, which may merit their broader inclusion into landscape scale conservation planning in the region.