36 Introduction

CHAPTER 3.1 LOCAL SPECIES DIVERSITY

Biodiversity research is to a large extent concerned with the documentation and understanding of the influence of habitat disturbance on the species diversity and composition of biological communities (e.g. Lawton et al. 1998, Lovejoy 1994). To understand how biological communities react to human habitat destruction or fragmentation is not only academically interesting, but of vital interest for ecosystem management, which undoubtedly will be of increasing concern for human societies in the future (see e.g. Linsenmair 1997, Ingram & Buongiorno 1996, Dotzauer 1998, Mawdsley 1996, Hector et al. 2001), considering especially the immense damage that is done to todays tropical ecosystems (Bowles et al. 1998, Sodhi et al. 2004). However, time- and manpower-constrained research usually involves investigation of one or a number of handpicked taxonomic groups, of which is inferred that they reflect reactions of other groups of organisms (Hammond 1994). This assumption has only rarely been tested within the same sampling sites (Lawton et al. 1998, Beccaloni & Gaston 1995, Schulze et al. in press), and while local diversity for a majority of taxa is diminishing with increasing disturbance, reactions of different groups are often quite dissimilar in detail (e.g. termites: Gathorne-Hardy et al. 2002a, Eggleton et al. 1997, scarabid beetles: Holloway et al. 1992, chrysomilid beetles: Wagner 1999, leaf litter ants: Brhl 2001, canopy invertebrates: Simon & Linsenmair 2001, Floren et al. 2001, vertebrates: Johns 1992, Lambert 1992, mantids: Helmkampf et al. in press, butterflies: Ghazoul 2002, Hamer et al. 1997, see also Lawton et al. 1998, Schulze et al. in press). Each taxon has certain specific habitat requirements (see also Dennis 2003, Summerville & Crist 2003) that often lead to species loss with the disturbance of tropical rainforest habitat, but may sometimes and for some taxa also lead to inverted patterns or reactions that cannot be explained with disturbance alone (e.g. Beck et al. 2002, Helmkampf et al. in press.) For example, within-habitat diversity of Geometrid moths in north-eastern Borneo seems to be largely ruled by undergrowth plant diversity (Beck et al. 2002), which leads to a general decline with increasing forest disturbance, but also leads to primary-forest-like species diversity in some moderately disturbed habitats that have a high undergrowth plant diversity (see also Chey et al. 1997, Intachat et al. 1997, 1999). Lepidopteran diversity and its change under different disturbance regimes or habitat gradients has been intensively investigated in northern Borneo (Holloway 1976, 1984, Holloway et al. 1992, Chey et al. 1997, Schulze 2000, Beck et al. 2002, Beck & Schulze 2000, Willott 1999, Willott et al. 2000, Hamer & Hill 2000, Schulze & Fiedler 2003a, Fiedler & Schulze 2004) and elsewhere in the Indo-Australian tropics (Intachat et al. 1999, Holloway 1987b, 1998a, Hill et al. 1995, Fermon et al. 2005). While for some groups (e.g. Geometridae, Pyralidae, Arctiinae, fruit-feeding butterflies) clear negative effects of habitat disturbance on species diversity and community composition were found (particularly when changing from forests to heavily disturbed or open agricultural land, e.g. Schulze 2000, Beck et al. 2002, Willott 1999), night-active hawkmoths were found to be apparently inert to habitat disturbance, both with regard to within-habitat disturbance as well as community composition (Schulze & Fiedler 2003b). Hawkmoths are ecologically important (e.g. as pollinators: Haber & Frankie 1989) and are a suitable model group for ecological investigations (e.g. Sutton & Collins 1991, Pearson