Premium
Mediation of area and edge effects in forest fragments by adjacent land use
Author(s) -
Hatfield Jack H.,
Barlow Jos,
Joly Carlos A.,
Lees Alexander C.,
Parruco Celso Henrique de Freitas,
Tobias Joseph A.,
Orme C. David L.,
BanksLeite Cristina
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/cobi.13390
Subject(s) - biodiversity , fragmentation (computing) , habitat fragmentation , forest fragmentation , geography , habitat destruction , threatened species , biodiversity hotspot , habitat , ecology , agroforestry , atlantic forest , environmental science , biology
Habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation have pervasive detrimental effects on tropical forest biodiversity, but the role of the surrounding land use (i.e., matrix) in determining the severity of these impacts remains poorly understood. We surveyed bird species across an interior‐edge‐matrix gradient to assess the effects of matrix type on biodiversity at 49 different sites with varying levels of landscape fragmentation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest—a highly threatened biodiversity hotspot. Both area and edge effects were more pronounced in forest patches bordering pasture matrix, whereas patches bordering Eucalyptus plantation maintained compositionally similar bird communities between the edge and the interior and exhibited reduced effects of patch size. These results suggest the type of matrix in which forest fragments are situated can explain a substantial amount of the widely reported variability in biodiversity responses to forest loss and fragmentation.