Elsevier

Ecosystem Services

Volume 36, April 2019, 100909
Ecosystem Services

Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services, and beneficiaries of tropical dry forests of Latin America: Review and new perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.100909Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Plants and invertebrates diversity are linked to ecosystem services as a process.

  • Supply and use are the most quantified ecosystem services components.

  • Beneficiaries with a direct impact on land were by far the most considered.

  • Beneficiaries are more often linked to biodiversity than to ecosystem services.

  • Links between biodiversity, services and beneficiaries are scarcely evaluated.

Abstract

We conducted a systematic literature review to identify and analyze research linking biodiversity, ecosystem services and their beneficiaries in tropical dry forests of Latin America. By assessing 71 studies published in the last 20 years, we addressed two questions: i) when research on links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and beneficiaries began and which of these links have been addressed the most? ii) how these links were addressed? Research on links began in 1997. Studies have been carried out mostly on a local scale and lasted for one year or more. Links between biodiversity and ecosystem services were the most frequently addressed (24% of total studies) considering biodiversity as a regulator of ecosystem processes. Plants and mammals’ abundance and richness were mainly linked with regulating and provisioning services. While these links have started to be addressed, only five studies actually linked the three components. It is necessary to redirect efforts towards studies effectively linking ecosystem services and beneficiaries, a link that still remains scarcely addressed. The current challenge for research is to incorporate the beneficiaries into the study of ecosystem services in tropical dry forests of Latin America and fill the information gaps by promoting long-term studies at larger spatial scales.

Section snippets

Study area

TDFs in Latin America occupy a wide latitudinal range across 14 countries, from the north in Mexico to the south in Bolivia and are characterized by a wide range of environmental conditions, with an annual rainfall varying from 250 to 2000 mm, 4 to 6 dry months (with rainfall less than 100 mm), and a mean annual temperature varying from 20 to 27 °C (Dirzo et al., 2011). In Latin America, the TDFs occupy an area of 519,597 km2 (Portillo-Quintero and Sánchez-Azofeifa, 2010), of which 203,884 km2

Bibliometric analysis

The number of studies that link biodiversity, ecosystem services and beneficiaries has increased slightly in the last decade (Fig. 1a). The oldest study was from 1997, and 2016 was the year with the largest number of studies published in our database (11). We found that most of the studies (75%) were published in English, while 24% were published in Spanish, the remaining percentage was published in both languages and we did not find studies in Portuguese. Ten of the 14 Latin American countries

Discussion

Our results show that very few studies evaluate the links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and beneficiaries together in TDF of Latin America. This probably because original primary research data that address all these links together (biodiversity, ecosystem services and beneficiaries) in the same study is still scarce globally (Lu et al, 2018). Lu et al. (2018) pointed out that studies from the nature science perspective have made great progress in linking ecosystem structure and

Conclusions

We have shown that the interest in the links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and the beneficiaries of the TDFs of Latin America has increased in the last two decades. But the emphasis is on the link between biodiversity and ecosystem services, while other links remains scarcely addressed. There is a clear tendency towards studies that focus on recognizing and evaluating the supply and use of provisioning and regulation services, which are generated by the abundance and richness of

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