Land-cover gradients determine alternate drivers of mammalian species richness in fragmented landscapes

IF 4 2区环境科学与生态学 Q1 ECOLOGY

Landscape Ecology Pub Date : 2024-08-03 DOI:10.1007/s10980-024-01952-7

M. Dennis, J. J. Huck, C. D. Holt, P. da Conceição Bispo, E. McHenry, A. Speak, P. James

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Context

Understanding habitat fragmentation is a critical concern for nature conservation and the focus of intense debate in landscape ecology. Resolving the uncertainty around the effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity remains an ongoing challenge that requires the successful delineation of multiple patch-landscape interactions.

Objectives

We carried out a regional analysis on species richness of woodland mammals to determine the relative influence of structural, compositional and functional characteristics related to woodland habitat across different land-cover gradients.

Methods

We calculated the Edge-weighted Habitat Index, an area-weighted measure of functional connectivity that incorporates a mechanistic estimate of edge-effects, for interior woodland habitat. We compared its influence on mammalian species richness to that of increasing edge and patch density, landscape diversity, and a habitat-only model, in different contexts of matrix hostility across Northern England in the UK.

Results

Our results demonstrate the relevance of alternative drivers of species richness resulting from patch-landscape interactions across gradients of matrix hostility. Evidence is provided for positive and negative effects of increasing structural (edge density), functional (connected interior habitat) and compositional (landscape diversity) attributes, varying according to matrix type and intensity. Results were sensitive to dominant land-cover types in the matrix and the scale of observation.

Conclusion

This study provides new insights into fragmentation effects on biodiversity and clarifies assumptions around the relative influence of structural, compositional and functional habitat characteristics on landscape-level species richness. We highlight the presence of thresholds, related to matrix hostility, that determine alternative drivers of species richness in woodland mammals. These drivers, and related thresholds, were sensitive to the scale of observation and landscape context. Landscape decisions aimed at promoting biodiversity should consider sources of matrix hostility and homogeneity at scales relevant to ecological processes of interest.

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土地覆盖梯度决定了破碎景观中哺乳动物物种丰富性的替代驱动因素

背景了解栖息地破碎化是自然保护的关键问题，也是景观生态学激烈讨论的焦点。我们对林地哺乳动物的物种丰富度进行了区域分析，以确定不同土地覆盖梯度中与林地生境相关的结构、组成和功能特征的相对影响。方法我们计算了林地内部生境的边缘加权生境指数（Edge-weighted Habitat Index），这是一种对功能连通性的区域加权测量方法，其中包含对边缘效应的机理估计。我们比较了该指数对哺乳动物物种丰富度的影响，以及在英国英格兰北部不同的基质敌意背景下，边缘和斑块密度增加、景观多样性和纯生境模型对哺乳动物物种丰富度的影响。有证据表明，结构性（边缘密度）、功能性（相连的内部栖息地）和组成性（景观多样性）属性的增加会产生积极和消极影响，这些影响因基质类型和强度而异。这项研究为了解破碎化对生物多样性的影响提供了新的视角，并澄清了关于结构、组成和功能性生境特征对景观物种丰富度的相对影响的假设。我们强调了与基质敌意有关的阈值的存在，这些阈值决定了林地哺乳动物物种丰富度的其他驱动因素。这些驱动因素及相关阈值对观察尺度和景观环境非常敏感。旨在促进生物多样性的景观决策应考虑基质敌意和同质性的来源，其尺度应与感兴趣的生态过程相关。

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来源期刊

Landscape Ecology 环境科学-地球科学综合

CiteScore

8.30

自引率

7.70%

发文量

164

审稿时长

8-16 weeks

期刊介绍： Landscape Ecology is the flagship journal of a well-established and rapidly developing interdisciplinary science that focuses explicitly on the ecological understanding of spatial heterogeneity. Landscape Ecology draws together expertise from both biophysical and socioeconomic sciences to explore basic and applied research questions concerning the ecology, conservation, management, design/planning, and sustainability of landscapes as coupled human-environment systems. Landscape ecology studies are characterized by spatially explicit methods in which spatial attributes and arrangements of landscape elements are directly analyzed and related to ecological processes.