WCS 3-Sentence Science

Seeing Indonesia’s Forests for the Trees

October 21, 2019

CREDIT: WCS INDONESIA PROGRAM

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present work by WCS’s Noviar Andayani on flowering dynamics of dipterocarp tree species isolated due to logging and fire.

1. Most of the tropical lowland trees from the dipterocarpacae family in Indonesia’s forests have been fragmented and isolated due to excessive logging and forest fires.
2. Researchers looked at 11 dipterocarp species in Bukit Barisan National Park — 3 of them are critically endangered, 2 are endangered, 1 is vulnerable, and the others are not listed in the IUCN Red List — and found that they flower more than one cycle per year — different from other common dipterocarps’ that usually have a super-annual pattern or mass flowering.
3. Even though mass flowering and fruiting season are believed to represent an evolutionary adaptation for plants that face high mortality, the phenological pattern does not seem to have affected the population dynamics of dipterocarps.

Study and Journal: “Phenological pattern and community structure of Dipterocarpaceae in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Lampung” from Tropical Ecosystems: Structure, Functions and Challenges in the Face of Global Change
WCS Co-Author(s): Noviar Andayani, Country Director, WCS Indonesia Program

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.