Evaluación integral y de bajo costo de la diversidad acústica como estimador de diversidad de fauna en un gradiente de bosques tropicales lluviosos de sucesión en la región de Sarapiquí.

Tropical forests can recover after the abandonment of human activities such as agriculture, livestock farming, and deforestation due to changes in the economic and conservation policies of countries. This recovery occurs through ecological succession processes, giving them the name of secondary forests. In the tropics, including countries like Costa Rica, secondary forests can recover structural characteristics and tree species richness in a few years or decades, reaching values similar to those of mature forests. This recovery is influenced by many factors, such as the proximity to seed trees, the degree of landscape fragmentation, and the seed-dispersing fauna that visits these forests. Secondary tropical forests have enormous potential to provide ecosystem services, including climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration, protection and conservation of biodiversity, and the recovery and conservation of wildlife species. However, information on the recovery of wildlife in secondary forests, particularly in Costa Rica, is very scarce. This is mainly due to the high costs associated with the time, equipment, and methodologies required for wildlife sampling and monitoring, especially for groups that can be reliable indicators of forest ecosystem quality, such as vertebrates. This has created a need to implement more comprehensive and cost-effective methodologies for wildlife monitoring, among which acoustic monitoring stands out. This methodology employs acoustic sampling to collect sounds of animals such as insects, frogs, birds, and mammals to detect their presence and acoustic activity. It uses automated recorders that are programmed and deplyed in the field, as well as software and online platforms for data analysis through acoustic complexity and diversity indices. Personal experiences using acoustic complexity and diversity indices have provided reliable results in secondary tropical dry forests in Costa Rica. However, this methodology has not yet been used in tropical wet forests. This research aims to estimate wildlife diversity in secondary tropical rainforests in the Sarapiquí region, Heredia, using novel and low-cost acoustic techniques. Specifically, it seeks to determine the recovery of wildlife in secondary forests of different succession ages through acoustic diversity, using acoustic monitoring that includes the recording of sounds from insects, frogs, birds, and mammals. This is a novel and low-cost analysis to evaluate wildlife that has not been previously used in secondary tropical wet forests in Costa Rica. It is expected that the secondary tropical forests studied will show greater acoustic diversity as the succession stage progresses, since structural characteristics reach greater complexity, which translates into more resources available for wildlife. It is also expected that the phenology of the forests related to meteorological variables will influence the variation in acoustic diversity observed during different times of the year.

Estimar la diversidad acústica y su relación con la estructura y fenología en bosques tropicales lluviosos con diferentes edades de sucesión

Gestión, conservación y el uso sostenible de los bosques y ecosistemas naturales.