Conservation of biodiversity in a relic forest in Benin – an overview

Lama forest is one of the last remnants of the West African forest/savannah mosaic known as the Dahomey Gap. It comprises natural forest and forest plantations and has the protection status of a classified forest. In the present article, we give an overview of an ongoing research partnership project focusing on the conservation of biodiversity in Lama forest. The project is based on the assumption that conser-vation and management strategies must be founded on an understanding of both structural and functional ecological traits. It comprises studies on the biodiversity of arthropods, a group which has received little attention as yet in tropical biodiver-sity assessments, as well as studies on key ecological processes such as the break-down of litter. Emphasis is laid on the relationship and interaction between natural forest and plantations. With respect to ecological as well as biogeographical pecu-liarities, we found evidence of the importance of Lama forest for biodiversity con-servation in Benin. Specifically, our study elucidated the role of anthropogenic fo-rests as buffer zones, migration corridors and surrogate habitats for rare forest ani