core question of minimum ecosystem reserve size has initiated an incredible variety of research that continues to grow and diversify. Study area The BDFFP spans approximately 1,000 km² of the Brazilian Amazon region located 70 km north of Manaus, Brazil in South America. This particular area of South America is famous for its tropical forests and climate, as well as high levels of wildlife diversity. The BDFFP Area of Relevant Ecological Interest, which contains the study areas, is divided between the municipalities of Manaus (3.61%) and Rio Preto da Eva (96.39%). It has a total area of . The research area is about north of the city of Manaus. On average, the Amazon Basin ranges from 1,900 to 2,500 millimeters of rainfall annually, while the mean annual temperature is 26 °C with a prominent dry season from June through October. 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. These forests, dominated primarily by palms in the understory, are home to over 1200 species of trees in at least 64 families. 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. Although the area is relatively flat, it includes three large cattle ranges and contains 11 forest fragments, ranging from 1-100 hectares, surrounded by continuous forest that acts as an experimental controls (Laurance 2011). For detailed images of the study area, visit the INPA maps In the early 1980s, clearing and burning led to fragment isolation of about 80 – 650 meters from the surrounding intact forest, a procedure that was continued several times throughout the experiment due to successful regrowth of secondary forests (Laurance 2011). The final reserve isolation took place in 1990 with the successful felling and burning of a 200-meter-wide strip around the Dimona reserve. An important characteristic of the diversity of the Amazon Basin is that many species are rare or distributed erratically throughout the Amazonian forest. This introduces an phenomenon known as the "sample effect", which suggests that the absence of species from the experimental fragments may be due to the fact that they were not present during fragment creation rather than from vanishment (Laurance 2011). This effect is essential to understanding the effects of forest fragmentation because small fragments cannot