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Time as the Missing Variable: Why Africa (And the Tropics) Need Long‐Term Ecological Studies Now More Than Ever

L. Luiselli,Thomas Madsen

Published 2026 in African Journal of Ecology

ABSTRACT

The ongoing biodiversity crisis is driven primarily by habitat degradation and accelerating climate change, with extreme climatic events increasingly shaping population dynamics across taxa. Detecting and interpreting these effects requires long‐term ecological studies, yet such datasets remain rare, including Africa where biodiversity is high and ecological systems are strongly influenced by climatic variability and human land use. Here we synthesise evidence demonstrating why short‐ and even medium‐term studies often fail to capture the demographic consequences of climate change, especially those driven by rare but severe events such as droughts and floods. Drawing on case studies from temperate and tropical systems—including predator–prey collapses, reptile population crashes and iconic long‐term projects such as Gombe and Amboseli—we show how sustained monitoring has transformed ecological understanding and conservation priorities. We emphasise that Africa's ecological complexity and prevalence of long‐lived species make long‐term, population‐focused research particularly critical. However, funding structures and institutional constraints frequently undermine continuity. To address this gap, we propose an integrative framework combining targeted long‐term ecological research funding, institutional support for data continuity, community‐based monitoring and local ecological knowledge, and the integration of diverse data sources. We argue that long‐term monitoring is not a luxury but a scientific and ethical necessity for effective conservation under rapid environmental change.

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