Study area
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragmentation Project (BDFFP), is located in central Amazonia (2°30 S, 60° W) along the BR-174 highway, ~80 km north of Manaus, Brazil. The BDFFP consists ofterra firme (non-flooded), lowland rainforest of nutrient-poor soils, with elevations ranging between 50 and 150 masl. (Gascon & Bierregaard, 2001). The rainy season of the region occurs from November to June, and rainfall in nearby climatic stations at the ZF2 and Reserva Ducke ranges from 1900 to 2550 mm annually (Ferreira et al., 2005; Aleixo et al., 2019). Eleven forest fragments that were isolated in 1980 are distributed among three adjacent cattle ranches (Dimona, Porto Alegre, and Colosso in the Esteio ranch). Forest fragments vary in size with replicates of 1-, 10-, and 100-ha, separated 70 to 1000 m from the mature continuous forest (Figure S1). The matrix in the BDFFP landscape was composed of cattle pasture from 1980 to 1995. As pasture creation slowed down in the region through the 1980s and ceased in the 1990s, areas of pastures and young scrub vegetation have been overtaken by secondary forests dominated by woody species of Vismia spp. andCecropia spp by the year 2015 (Laurance et al., 2011; Laurance et al., 2018; Stouffer, 2020).