Assessing Ecological Disturbance in Neotropical Forest Landscapes Using High-Level Diversity and High-Level Functionality: Surprising Outcomes from a Case Study with Spider Assemblages

Spiders have been increasingly used as environmental and ecological indicators in conservation ecosystem management. In the Neotropics, there is a shortage of information regarding spiders’ taxonomies responses to anthropogenic disturbances. To unravel these hitches, we tested possibility using high-level diversity functionality evaluate spider assemblages’ sensitivity landscape changes. This approach, if proven informative, might overcome relevant limitations taxonomic derived indexes, which are considered time-consuming, cost-demanding dependent on (few) expert taxonomists’ availability. Our results highlight pertinence both indicators’ structural changes induced by increasing disturbance, associated with reductions complexity, microclimates, microhabitats. Overall, were sensitive disturbance should be useful resource for assessing extent ecosystems’ disruptions also guide managers landscapes’ restoration.