What makes a successful species? Traits facilitating survival in altered tropical forests

BACKGROUND: Ongoing conversion, disturbance and fragmentation of tropical forests stress this ecosystem and cause the decline or disappearance of many species. Particular traits have been identified which indicate an increasing extinction risk of a species, but traits facilitating survival in altered habitats have mostly been neglected. Here we search for traits that make a species tolerant to disturbances, thus independent of pristine forests. We identify the fauna that have an increasing effect on the ecosystem and its functioning in our human-dominated landscapes. METHODS: We use a unique set of published data on the occurrences of 243 frog species in pristine and altered forests throughout the tropics. We established a forest dependency index with four levels, based on these occurrence data and applied Random Forest classification and binomial Generalized Linear Models to test whether species life history traits, ecological traits or range size influence the likelihood of a species to persist in disturbed habitats. RESULTS: Our results revealed that indirect developing species exhibiting a large range size and wide elevational distribution, being independent of streams, and inhabiting the leaf litter, cope best with modifications of their natural habitats. CONCLUSION: The traits identified in our study will likely persist in altered tropical forest systems and are comparable to those generally recognized for a low species extinction risk. Hence our findings will help to predict future frog communities in our human-dominated world. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-017-0135-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.