Fast recovery of soil macrofauna in regenerating forests of the Amazon.

The emergence of secondary forests in deforested tropical regions represents an opportunity to mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change, but there is still debate on how fast and to which level these forests can recover biodiversity. Recent studies have shown that the recovery of plant and vertebrate species richness is relatively fast, but the pace of recovery for other groups remains unclear. Soil macroinvertebrates play critical roles on litter decomposition and seed dispersal, therefore the pace of their recovery has consequences for the entire forest ecosystem.