An Amazonian rainforest and its fragments as a laboratory of global change

We synthesize findings from one of the world's largest and longest-running experimental investigations, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). Spanning an area of ∼1000 km2 in central Amazonia, the BDFFP was initially designed to evaluate the effects of fragment area on rainforest biodiversity and ecological processes. However, over its 38-year history to date the project has far transcended its original mission, and now...