Tropical timber plantations as habitat for ground-dwelling mammals: A camera-trapping assessment in Central Panama

Reforestation projects in the tropics often consist of plantations, typically monocultures of non-native timber species. It has been questioned whether such plantations are suitable as wildlife habitat, but empirical evidence is scarce, especially on plantations embedded on highly disturbed landscapes. Here, we compare species richness and occupancy of ground-dwelling mammals between five types of plantations within a single area in Central Panama, the narrowest tract of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. We deployed camera traps at stratified random points and followed a hierarchical modeling approach to compare community composition and occupancy between plantation types. We found a total of 16 ground-dwelling mammals in the area, most of which were small-bodied and short-lived, and the majority of species' occupancy probabilities were below 0.5 at any given plantation. Teak (Tectona grandis) plantations, which covered the largest area in the study, had the lowest estimated richness and occupancy, with occupancy probabilities exceeding 0.5 for just three species. Conversely, plantations of the native Pachira quinata and the non-native Gmelina arborea, covering an area four and nineteen times smaller than Teak, respectively, had higher richness and occupancy. Occupancy values were intermediate in the Acacia and mixed plantation types. Our findings suggest that plantations embedded in lowland tropical landscapes have limited conservation value for large-bodied mammals, and are ecologically constrained habitats for small- and medium-sized mammals.