This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) tropical forests stretch across an extraordinary landscape of rivers, wetlands, savannas and towering trees. But in a forest this vast, biodiversity doesn't exist on a single plane.
It climbs into the canopy. It moves between branches and vines, disappears into the understory and travels across the forest floor. Now, Florida Atlantic University researchers and collaborators have found a noninvasive way to see more of this hidden world.
Using infrared cameras from the forest floor to the canopy, researchers created a 3D view of biodiversity in the DRC's Lomami National Park—revealing which mammals share the forest, how they use that 3D space and which environmental factors shape the community. Published in the Journal of Mammalogy, the first study developed the method to examine species richness, community composition and vertical habitat use across three survey areas in Lomami National Park and its buffer zone. Researchers identified 47 mammal taxa representing primates, carnivores, rodents, artiodactyls (even-toed hoofed mammals like red river hogs) and pangolins, which are among the world's most heavily trafficked mammals.
Eight species were detected outside their currently documented geographic ranges, providing records that could help inform future range assessments. The study generated thousands of videos that researchers and trained volunteers reviewed for species identification and behavior. The cameras revealed a remarkably layered community, with 32 taxa detected on the ground, 23 in the understory and 22 in the canopy.
While ground cameras captured most mammal diversity, they missed many arboreal species—underscoring the importance of the higher layers of the forest. Surprisingly, 25% of arboreal mammals preferred the understory, highlighting the value of surveying the lower-mid-forest strata in complex forests tangled with vines. For Daniel Alempijevic, Ph.D., lead author of the Journal of Mammalogy study and FAU alumnus, getting the cameras into those locations was quite the undertaking.
Alempijevic's mentor and senior author, Kate Detwiler, Ph.D., an associate professor of biological sciences in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, sent him to Panama to learn climbing techniques, skills that became essential for conducting canopy research in the Congo Basin. "The cameras essentially gave us a way to turn a single point in the forest into a vertical column of observation," said Alempijevic.
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