Spider biodiversity responses to riparian restoration in Indonesian oil palm plantations
Supervisor: Edgar Turner
Co-Supervisor: Dr Michael Pashkevich,
Project Summary (MPhil):
Background: Oil palm is the number one source of vegetable oil worldwide, with plantations covering nearly 30 million hectares globally, and Indonesia and Malaysia being the major producers. In both countries, there is established guidance (through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil, and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil certification schemes) to maintain or restore riparian vegetation along river margins. However, there is limited understanding on the effectiveness of alternative restoration strategies. The Riparian Ecosystem Restoration in Tropical Agriculture (RERTA) Project is a long-term, large-scale riparian restoration experiment in Riau, Indonesia that is addressing this knowledge gap.
This MPhil project will assess the impacts of alternative riparian restoration strategies on the biodiversity of spiders: a key mesopredator in oil palm. Building on previous field surveys and existing data, the student will survey spider communities within and outside of riparian areas, examining how alternative restoration management influences spider communities and associated ecosystem functioning. The project will benefit from a close collaboration with researchers from the Natural Resources Institute Finland and IPB University, Bogor, and researchers at Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology Research Institute, who manage the RERTA Project.
Type of Work:
The student will collect data on spider communities within established riparian restoration experimental sites in mature oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia. This includes three different restoration options on replicated rivers (including active replanting with a mix of six native tree species, and leaving mature oil palm during replanting to restore passively), as a well as a control treatment (young oil palm replanted to the river edge). Field work will be carried out in collaboration with researchers from Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology Research Institute, giving the student access to information and expertise on oil palm management, and a valuable link to the oil palm industry, facilitating translation of results into management practice.
Importance of the area of research concerned:
Findings will contribute to the more-sustainable management of oil palm plantations. In combination with results from the wider RERTA team of researchers, findings from the MPhil will be fed back to oil palm managers and sustainability certification bodies to guide the development of recommendations for riparian restoration in oil palm plantations across the tropics.
References:
Luke SH, Foster WA, Advento AD, Aryawan AAK, Adhy DN, Ashton-Butt A, Barclay H, Drewer J, Dumbrell A, Eycott AE, Harianja MF, Hinsch JA, Hood ASC, Kurniawan C, Kurz DJ, Mann DJ, Matthews Nicholass KJ, Naim M, Pashkevich MD, Prescott GW, Sudharto Ps, Pujianto, Purnomo D, Purwoko RR,Putra S, Rambe TDS, Slade EM, Soeprapto, Spear DM, Suhardi, Tan D, Tao1 H-H, Tarigan RS, Wahyuningsih R, Waters HS, Widodo RH, WoodhamCR, Caliman J-P, Snaddon JL, Turner EC (2020) The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme: using large-scale experiments to test and develop more-sustainable oil palm management. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 2:75. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2019.00075 Stone J, Advento A Pashkevich M, Aryawan AA, Caliman J-P, Hood A, Foster W, Naim M, Pujianto, Purnomo D, Suhardi, Tarigan RS, Rambe, Tuani DS, Widodo RH, Luke S, Snaddon J& Turner EC (2023). Maintaining understory vegetation in oil palm plantations supports higher assassin bug numbers (Ecological solutions and evidence http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.12293). Pashkevich, M.D. et al. (2022) Riparian buffers made of mature oil palms have inconsistent impacts on oil palm ecosystems. Ecological Applications 32, 1–22