Follow the forest: Slow resilience of West African rainforest frog assemblages after selective logging

Abstract Assessing resilience of ecological communities, the ability of species assemblages to return to a previous state following disturbance, is an essential task when designing biodiversity friendly concepts for silvicultural management regimes. However, ecological communities may demonstrate resilience only after long time periods, and long-term data, collected on permanent study sites within standardized sampling frameworks, are scarce. We assessed the resilience of amphibian assemblages to disturbance via selective logging within the largest remaining rainforest in Ivory Coast, the Tai National Park. We analyzed extensive amphibian and habitat data obtained during two major assessment periods > 15 years apart (period P1 = in 2000, period P2 = in 2016–2017) and spanning 45 years post-logging recovery (period P1 = 30 years post-logging). We revisited identical sites and used identical, standardized methodology in both study periods. Forest structure in formerly selectively logged sites slowly recovered towards old growth forest structure over the course of 45 years, with most visible changes occurring between P1 and P2. While species richness and diversity in both old growth and secondary forests remained largely unchanged across the study periods, frog assemblage composition in formerly disturbed sites followed the forest recovery process. Yet, their composition was still distinctly different from old growth forest assemblages. The different levels of resilience over time indicate that the slowest organisms in our system (forest trees) set the pace for the recovery of associated taxa (frogs). Effective post-harvesting restoration schemes need to incorporate these delayed response times. Thus, significantly longer felling cycles than those commonly applied in regular harvesting schemes are needed if the goal is to conserve and restore original forest diversity in logged forest ecosystems.