Dear Colleagues,

Primeval and natural forest communities in the 21st century, despite attempts to protect them in the network of national parks and reserves, are disappearing very quickly. Tropical forests alone have lost 32 million ha in the last 20 years. In 2019, another million hectares of forests in Australia, California, and the subboreal taiga of three continents of the Northern Hemisphere burned. The scale of logging is still increasing, leading to the conversion of forests into pastures, crop fields, and economically useful oil palm or avocado plantations. Sometimes, in the place of destroyed communities, forest monocultures are established, or spontaneous nonforest vegetation with the participation of pioneer species of trees and shrubs occurs. In time, these types of plant communities begin to transform into secondary forests. The latter already account for the major part of the temperate and subtropical forest area today, to which large-scale afforestation programs contribute worldwide. Therefore, the questions of what role secondary forests (both cultivated and spontaneous) can play in nature conservation and what part of the biodiversity typical of natural and primeval forests in different geographical zones they can preserve become increasingly important lately.

In this Diversity Special Issue entitled “Biodiversity of Secondary Forests and their Importance in Nature Conservation”, we encourage researchers to submit their manuscripts on the following questions:

• To what extent do secondary forests contribute to the protection of biodiversity of native flora and fauna?
• Do forest plantations play any role in biodiversity preservation?
• What losses in flora and fauna diversity are caused by the conversion of natural forests into intensively managed ones?
• How does the proportion between native and introduced species change in secondary or artificial forests?
• What is the conservation value of new assemblages of plants, animals, and fungi?
• Do secondary and native forests differ in their functional diversity?
• Should secondary forests be protected by law and included into the networks of protected areas due to their immanent natural values?

Our own experience, observations, and research have allowed us to know secondary forests and plantations from the temperate zone through subtropics to the tropics, so we may assume the answers to the abovementioned questions would be very different. Therefore, we expect the widest possible representation of papers from various geographical regions, including various systematic groups of fauna and flora. Such a comprehensive picture would be a valuable contribution of the proposed Special Issue, especially in the face of increasing transformation of forests and threats to the survival of forest-dependent biodiversity worldwide.

Dr. Krzysztof Świerkosz
Dr. Kamila Reczyńska
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Biodiversity
• Native species
• Biological invasions
• Functional diversity
• Secondary forests
• Forest monocultures
• Afforestation
• Human environmental impact
• Nature conservation
• Endangered species
• Protected areas