Generally, vascular epiphyte diversity has been found to be higher in primary than in secondary or disturbed vegetation (Hickey 1994; Hietz 1998; Barthlott et al. 2001; Flores-Palacios & García-Franco 2001). The degree to which epiphytes are negatively affected depends on the severity of disturbance, the size of the remnant trees, or the age of the secondary
orest. For instance, 15-year-old fallows in Bolivia had 60–70 % fewer species than nearby primary forests (Krömer & Gradstein 2003); only 13 species were found on a plantation of some 400 Cedrela trees ca. 8m tall in contrast to 178 species in a primary forest plot in Venezuela (Barthlott et al. 2001), whereas selective logging reduced epiphyte species numbers by only 24% in an Indian lowland moist forest (Padmawathe et al. 2004). Others found little difference in
species numbers between natural and remnant or secondary vegetation when differences in tree density or size were accounted for (Hietz-Seifert et al. 1996; Hietz 2005).