Consequences of a largescale fragmentation experi

Authors: Ricardo Rocha Adrià LópezBaucells Fábio Z Farneda Milou Groenenberg Paulo E D Bobrowiec Mar Cabeza Jorge M Palmeirim Christoph F J Meyer

Publish Date: 2016/07/25

Volume: 32, Issue: 1, Pages: 31-45

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Abstract

Habitat loss fragmentation and degradation are widespread drivers of biodiversity decline Understanding how habitat quality interacts with landscape context and how they jointly affect species in humanmodified landscapes is of great importance for informing conservation and managementWe surveyed bats in 39 sites comprising continuous forest CF fragments forest edges and intervening secondary regrowth For each site we assessed vegetation structure localscale variable and for five focal scales quantified habitat amount and four landscape configuration metricsSmaller fragments edges and regrowth sites had fewer species and higher levels of dominance than CF Regardless of the landscape scale analysed species richness and evenness were mostly related to the amount of forest cover Vegetation structure and configurational metrics were important predictors of abundance whereby the magnitude and direction of response to configurational metrics were scaledependent Responses were ensemblespecific with localscale vegetation structure being more important for frugivorous than for gleaning animalivorous batsOur study indicates that scalesensitive measures of landscape structure are needed for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of fragmentation on tropical biota Although forest fragments and regrowth habitats can be of conservation significance for tropical bats our results further emphasize that primary forest is of irreplaceable value underlining that their conservation can only be achieved by the preservation of large expanses of pristine habitatWe would like to thank the many volunteers and field assistants that helped during fieldwork Tobias Jeppsson for providing a modified version of the hierpart function for the hierarchical partitioning analysis and the BDFFP management team for logistic support Funding was provided by a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology FCT project grant PTDC/BIABIC/111184/2009 to CFJM RR was supported by FCT SFRH/BD/80488/2011 ALB by FCT PD/BD/52597/2014 and CNPq 160049/20130 PEDB by CAPES and MC by Academy of Finland grant 257686 Research was conducted under ICMBio permit 268772 and is publication 698 in the BDFFP technical series

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