Abstract
This paper summarizes aspects of the evolution of the present communities of lemurs in Madagascar in view of the usefulness of lemurs as indicators for habitat quality. It is shown here that the number of lemur species present in any given area and the taxonomic and functional composition of their communities follow deterministic patterns. Floristically diverse habitats contain more lemur species than sites with fewer tree species. Thus, the presence of lemur species gives some information about habitat characteristics. This fulfils one of the basic requirements for indicator species, namely that their presence reflects biodiversity in general in a deterministic way. On the other hand, deterministic historical processes eliminated certain lemur species with higher probabilities than others. These past events superimpose the present ecological relationships. They make it impossible to derive unambiguous information on present habitat quality based on the absence of lemur species. Thus, the presence of lemur species gives some information about habitat quality, however, the absence of the same species may not be related to present forest characteristics but be based on habitat characteristics in the past. Therefore, while all processes outlined here are highly deterministic, their combined effects are not easy to predict because of differences in their temporal scales.
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Ganzhorn, J.U. (1999). Lemurs as Indicators for Assessing Biodiversity in Forest Ecosystems of Madagascar: Why it does not Work. In: Kratochwil, A. (eds) Biodiversity in ecosystems: principles and case studies of different complexity levels. Tasks for vegetation science, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4677-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4677-7_10
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