Unpacking the impoverished nature of secondary forests

In a world where even documenting species declines in tropical systems is challenging enough, Klimes et al. raise the bar by addressing the deceptively simple, yet inherently complex, question of why species richness is lower in secondary forests. Using the first plot-scale inventory of arboreal ant nests, combined with an innovative rarefaction technique, they quantify the relative importance of a range of successional factors and highlight the contribution of beta diversity to the higher richness in primary forest.