Fig 1.
Gallery and spiny forests at Berenty Reserve, Madagascar.
(a) Forest locations at Berenty reserve (Modified from Rambeloarivony & Jolly 2013b). (b) Aerial photograph of Berenty Reserve forests, showing forest plot locations. Spiny forest plots are indicated with yellow circles, and gallery forest plots are indicated with green circles (Image: Modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2024]). (c) Photo of the spiny forest, and (d) Photo of the gallery forest (Photos: Ariadna Mondragón-Botero).
Fig 2.
Number and overlap in species in the different forest areas in Berenty Reserve.
The Venn diagrams show the overlap between a) the gallery and the spiny forest, and b) among the three sites of the gallery forest. Only 10 species were shared between the spiny and gallery forests, and 12 were common to the three gallery forest sites.
Fig 3.
Species accumulation curves for the spiny and gallery forests in Berenty Reserve.
a) gallery and spiny forests where the yellow line (dots) corresponds to the spiny forest and the green line (squares) corresponds to the gallery forest; (b) Species accumulation curves for the three different within the gallery forest areas: Anaramalangy (triangles), Ankoba (squares), and Malaza (circles). The x-axis represents cumulative sampling effort, with each point corresponding to an additional sampling site (or plot) surveyed. Vertical lines on each curve show the 95% confidence interval.
Table 1.
Comparisons of diversity, structure, and environmental variables between the gallery and spiny forests.
Asterisks denote significant differences between forest types assessed with a Kruskal-Wallis test. Different letters (a, b) indicate significant differences between the two forest types assessed via a Dunn’s test.
Table 2.
Comparisons of diversity, structure, and environmental variables among the three gallery forest areas.
In a row, asterisks and different letters indicate significant differences between forest types assessed with a Kruskal-Wallis test. Different letters (a, b, c) indicate distinct groups identified by a Dunn’s test.
Fig 4.
Species Importance Value Index (IVIs) for the gallery and spiny forests.
The IVIs is shown in (a) for the gallery forest and in (b) for the spiny forest.
Fig 5.
Species Importance Value Index (IVIs) the three forest sites within the gallery forest.
(a) Anaramalangy, (b) Ankoba, and (c) Malaza.
Fig 6.
Distribution of adult and seedling tamarind densities in the gallery forest at Berenty Reserve.
(a) Density of adult tamarind trees in each diameter size class across all the gallery forest plots (b) Number of subplots (frequency) per seedling density category. Each category represents the number of tamarind seedlings per hectare within that range (e.g., ‘1 to 100’ indicates subplots where the seedling density was between 1 and 100 individuals per hectare). In this study, we defined adult trees as tamarinds with a DBH ≥ 10 cm and seedlings as plants with diameter at root collar ≤ 1 cm.
Fig 7.
Lemur habitat quality in Berenty Reserve.
The habitat quality is represented as the total basal area of all food tree species consumed by the three species of diurnal lemurs in (a) the gallery and spiny forests, and (b) the three different gallery forest sites. Comparisons are done within lemur species. Vertical bars represent standard errors and different letters indicate significant differences between forests.