thumb|right|The Project is located near Manaus
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP; or Projeto Dinâmica Biológica de Fragmentos Florestais, PDBFF, in Portuguese) is a large-scale ecological experiment looking at the effects of habitat fragmentation on tropical rainforest. The experiment which was established in 1979 is located near Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The project is jointly managed by the Amazon Biodiversity Center and the Brazilian Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA).
The project was initiated in 1979 by Thomas Lovejoy to investigate the SLOSS debate. Initially named the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems Project, the project created forest fragments of sizes , , and . Data were collected prior to the creation of the fragments and studies of the effects of fragmentation now exceed 25 years.
As of April 2020, 785 scholarly journal articles and more than 150 graduate dissertations and theses had emerged from the project.
History
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), was born out of the SLOSS (single large or several small reserves of equal area) debate in the mid 1970s about the application of the theory of island biogeography to conservation planning. The debate was triggered when Dan Simberloff and Larry Abele questioned the use of the theory of island biogeography to the design of nature reserves. The theory, developed by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson predicted that the species richness of an island increases as the area of a reserve increases and distance to mainland colonizing sources decreases. It also determined that the shape of a reserve is very important to the species diversity. Reserves with a large edge to area ratio tend to be affected more by edge effects than reserves with a small edge to area ratio. The distance between reserves and the habitat surrounding the reserves (the matrix) can affect species richness and diversity as well. The concept was applied to planning nature preserves, which are effectively islands in a sea of human-generated or dominated habitat. Simberloff and Abele argued that even though smaller reserves will hold fewer species than larger reserves, a series of small reserves could theoretically hold (protect) as many species as a single large reserve.
Despite the seeming logic of these ideas, ecologists questioned the results of the SLOSS debate due to the lack of a critical body of evidence on the subject. Many ecologists began to conduct studies and experiments on fragmented ecosystems to fill this gap, including Tom Lovejoy, who designed a large-scale experiment that studied the effects of different sizes of fragmentation to animals, plants, and ecological processes. The original idea was conceived in 1977. Lovejoy’s objective throughout the experiment was to gain insight on the effects of habitat fragmentation on species in tropical rainforests. He called it the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems Project (the name was later changed to the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project).
In 1978, Lovejoy hired Rob Bierregaard to implement the project on the ground. In 1979 the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) endorsed and Brazil's National Research Council approved Lovejoy’s experiment. As soon as the permits were granted, Bierregaard moved to Brazil to launch the project in the rainforests on the north of Manaus. The BDFFP began as a collaborative project between the Brazilian National Institute for Amazonian Research and the World Wildlife Fund. It is now a joint project between INPA and the Smithsonian Institution. The BDFFP became one of the most important studies of fragmentation in tropical forests because it is the only long-running study with data before fragments were created with the original data being from the continuous forest. Another distinct feature of the forests in the BDFFP is the canopy, which can reach from 30 to 37 meters with some emergents reaching up to 55 meters.
The BDFFP reserves are found in non-flooded tropical lowland rainforest where soils are nutrient-poor and the topography ranges from 50 to 150 m in elevation.