Effect of canal blocking on biodiversity of degraded peatlands: Insight from West Kalimantan

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014 October 8, 2025 12 / 23 stable until dawn. On the contrary, lowest humidity was recorded during the period 10:00–15:00. Humidity increased until nighttime and remained stable but high until morning, comparable to the pattern of temperature. This pattern was consis- tent across all four habitat types. The median temperature in disturbed and less disturbed peat forests was relatively lower than in estate crops and disturbed wet shrubs. The median humidity was relatively higher in disturbed and less disturbed peat forest compared to estate crops and disturbed wet shrubs. Discussion Within the rewetting sites, we found a clear pattern in wildlife attributes between forested and non-forested areas. Estate crop as a non-forested habitat is different from disturbed and less disturbed peat forest in terms of wildlife diversity (Shan- non diversity index, Simpson diversity index, acoustic diversity index, bioacoustics index), wildlife richness (Menhinick’s Richness Index, Margalef’s Richness Index), wildlife evenness (Pielou evenness index and acoustic evenness index), and wildlife dominance (Berger Parker Dominance Index). Disturbed and less disturbed peat forest is found to be similar in all wildlife variables, except for the acoustic complexity index. Forested area has higher wildlife diversity, richness, and evenness, also lower dominance compared to non-forested area, particularly estate crop. This finding is also in line with

similarity of plant species composition found within forested and non-forested area and differences between forested and non-forested area, with forested sites having higher plant diversity and richness. Our study finds that habitat features affect wildlife in many ways. Wildlife richness was linked with habitat type, month, temperature, and humidity. Wildlife diversity was correlated with habitat type, temperature, understorey density, and plant diversity. Wildlife evenness was affected by habitat type, temperature, understorey density, and canopy cover. Wildlife dominance was related to habitat type, month, seedling density, and vegetation species richness. Fig 8. Boxplot of temperature and humidity for four habitat types. P-values for pairwise comparisons between months within each habitat were obtained from linear mixed-effects models with habitat, transect code, and transect position as nested random effects. Post-hoc tests were adjusted by Bonferroni correction. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014.g008