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which may cause severe loss, such as defoliation, seed, and wood damage. Even though they are crucially important for tropical forest ecosystems (Table 3), they are facing critical threats from human induced factors such as land-use change (i.e., deforestation, fragmentation and degradation) that have altered the natural habitat of the reptile species that directly or indi-

Reptiles are highly sensitive species compared to other fauna species, i.e., they become more vulnerable due to land use change, i.e., habitat alteration [95]. This might be because they have a small home range, which is adversely affected by habitat loss and degradation [96, 97]. For example, deforestation may cause severe habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation which adversely affect the population, community parameters of reptiles inhabiting in a tropical

Anthropogenic activities had altered the reptilian intact habitat through land-use change, their habitats becomes degraded and lost thus ultimately becoming unsuitable for them. This is because forested reptile prefers dense and moist habitat, which provides them shelter and rich food resources for their survival, protection, and reproduction. Deforestation may disturb their breeding sites, reduce home range, and increase visibility for predators. Likewise, fragmentation reduced their home range, while degradation reduced their food resources and breeding behavior. Furthermore, land-use changes such as deforestation, fragmentation, and degradation may alter microclimatic conditions of particular dwelling habitats such as temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, and sunlight that ultimately modify the vegetation structure and

Amphibians are cold-blooded vertebrates and are carnivorous in nature. They play a key role to control the various pests, thus balancing the nature [101]. Amphibians are a significant component of the tropical rainforest ecosystem (Figure 7; Table 4) and play an important role in pest control. Habitat loss due highest deforestation is responsible for one-third population decline of the amphibians [10, 102–104]. One-fifth amphibians of Southeast Asia are reported as threatened species [105]. This is because they have small home ranges, i.e., specific aquatic habitat, higher vulnerability to habitat change, and visibility to predators. In addition, over-harvesting from natural habitat for food supply (human consumption), medicine (traditional use), and pet trade also had exerted great pressure on the population of

In tropical rainforests, logging creates gaps and alters the habitat structure and microclimatic conditions, e.g., temperature, relative humidity, and light [107, 108], which influence on the invertebrate diversity and distribution. After logging, new habitat with a different microclimate may develop which tend to be unsuitable for a wide array of invertebrates [109, 110]. This indicates that land-use changes influence invertebrate diversity, richness, and distribution. It has been stated that disturbing the habitat affects invertebrate colonization and distribution [111, 112]. Basset [113] reported that the canopy of tropical rain forest is rich in Coleoptera,

rectly depend upon tropical rainforests for their survival and reproduction.

40 Tropical Forests - The Challenges of Maintaining Ecosystem Services while Managing the Landscape

2.4. Amphibian species composition of tropical rainforest

2.5. Invertebrate species composition of tropical rainforest

rainforest ecosystem [98–100].

composition.

amphibians [104].

Mohamed Zakaria1 \*, Muhammad Nawaz Rajpar2 , Ibrahim Ozdemir<sup>3</sup> and Zamri Rosli<sup>4</sup>

\*Address all correspondence to: mzakaria@upm.edu.my


3 Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management, Faculty of Forestry, Suleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey

4 Forestry Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Sarawak, Malaysia
