preprint · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Secondary forests surrounding Taï National Park in West Africa show varying rates of ecological recovery across different biodiversity dimensions. Across 125 regenerating plots and 15 primary forest plots, overall species diversity recovered twice as quickly as floristic composition. Remnant trees significantly accelerated the restoration of both diversity and composition. Additionally, prior land use shaped recovery, with former cocoa farms positively influencing alpha diversity and species composition. Functional traits also showed divergent trajectories: specific leaf area and seed mass recovered rapidly along successional gradients, whereas wood density recovered more gradually. Although the proportion of IUCN Red List species remained stable throughout forest succession, primary forests retained significantly higher numbers of old-growth indicator species. Preserving ecological resilience therefore requires the simultaneous protection of both mature primary forests and regenerating secondary stands.
Understanding how tropical forests regenerate helps conservation practitioners design better landscape management strategies. As deforestation threatens West African rainforests, knowing that remnant trees accelerate diversity recovery can guide reforestation programmes, while the persistence of unique indicator species demonstrates that regenerating secondary forests cannot entirely replace the ecological value of intact primary forests.
The abstract does not indicate an immediate commercial application pathway, representing early-stage ecological research. The findings could potentially be applied by conservation organisations, forestry managers, and habitat restoration developers to design evidence-based reforestation programmes and ecological offset projects, particularly in identifying the retention of remnant trees as a cost-effective practice.
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ABSTRACT Extensive deforestation and disturbance have reshaped forest landscapes in West Africa, including areas surrounding Taï National Park, the largest remaining block of Upper Guinean rainforest. Although many degraded areas are currently undergoing regeneration, the capacity of these secondary forests to recover their biodiversity attributes remains insufficiently assessed within this park. This study quantifies the multidimensional restoration of biodiversity across 125 secondary forest plots and 15 primary forest plots representing 14,731 inventoried individuals in four sectors of the park. Using a Bayesian modelling framework, we estimate recovery trajectories of Shannon diversity, floristic composition, functional traits (wood density, leaf mass per area, seed mass), and conservation-relevant species. The different biodiversity attributes recovered at contrasting rates. Diversity was restored more rapidly (λ = 0.06) than floristic composition (λ = 0.03), and these recovery varied according to environmental variables. Among these, the presence of remnant trees showed the highest median on diversity (0.53 ± 0.61) and floristic composition (0.37 ± 0.17), promoting the rapid recovery of both attributes, followed by prior land use, particularly cocoa farming which also positively influenced the recovery of alpha diversity (λ = 0.03) and floristic composition (λ = 0.02). Regarding functional traits, they displayed contrasting dynamics: specific leaf area and seed mass recovered rapidly along successional gradients, whereas wood density followed a more gradual recovery trajectory. From a conservation perspective, although the proportion of IUCN Red List species remained stable along the successional gradient, old-growth indicator species were significantly more abundant in primary forests. To ensure the long-term conservation of biodiversity, protecting both primary and regenerating forests is essential to preserve the ecological resilience of this park.
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DOI: 10.64898/2026.08.11.744329
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