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Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Amphibians are the most threatened species-rich vertebrate group, with species extinctions and population declines occurring globally, even in protected and seemingly pristine habitats. These ‘enigmatic declines’ are generated by climate change and infectious diseases. However, the consequences of t...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10688307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38034867 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16185 |
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author | Edwards, Alex W. Harrison, Xavier A. Smith, M. Alex Chavarría Díaz, Maria Marta Sasa, Mahmood Janzen, Daniel H. Hallwachs, Winnie Chaves, Gerardo Fernández, Roberto Palmer, Caroline Wilson, Chloe North, Alexandra Puschendorf, Robert |
author_facet | Edwards, Alex W. Harrison, Xavier A. Smith, M. Alex Chavarría Díaz, Maria Marta Sasa, Mahmood Janzen, Daniel H. Hallwachs, Winnie Chaves, Gerardo Fernández, Roberto Palmer, Caroline Wilson, Chloe North, Alexandra Puschendorf, Robert |
author_sort | Edwards, Alex W. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Amphibians are the most threatened species-rich vertebrate group, with species extinctions and population declines occurring globally, even in protected and seemingly pristine habitats. These ‘enigmatic declines’ are generated by climate change and infectious diseases. However, the consequences of these declines are undocumented as no baseline ecological data exists for most affected areas. Like other neotropical countries, Costa Rica, including Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in north-western Costa Rica, experienced rapid amphibian population declines and apparent extinctions during the past three decades. To delineate amphibian diversity patterns within ACG, a large-scale comparison of multiple sites and habitats was conducted. Distance and time constrained visual encounter surveys characterised species richness at five sites—Murciélago (dry forest), Santa Rosa (dry forest), Maritza (mid-elevation dry-rain forest intersect), San Gerardo (rainforest) and Cacao (cloud forest). Furthermore, species-richness patterns for Cacao were compared with historic data from 1987–8, before amphibians declined in the area. Rainforests had the highest species richness, with triple the species of their dry forest counterparts. A decline of 45% (20 to 11 species) in amphibian species richness was encountered when comparing historic and contemporary data for Cacao. Conservation efforts sometimes focus on increasing the resilience of protected areas, by increasing their range of ecosystems. In this sense ACG is unique containing many tropical ecosystems compressed in a small geographic space, all protected and recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site. It thus provides an extraordinary platform to understand changes, past and present, and the resilience of tropical ecosystems and assemblages, or lack thereof, to climate change. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10688307 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106883072023-11-30 Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica Edwards, Alex W. Harrison, Xavier A. Smith, M. Alex Chavarría Díaz, Maria Marta Sasa, Mahmood Janzen, Daniel H. Hallwachs, Winnie Chaves, Gerardo Fernández, Roberto Palmer, Caroline Wilson, Chloe North, Alexandra Puschendorf, Robert PeerJ Biodiversity Amphibians are the most threatened species-rich vertebrate group, with species extinctions and population declines occurring globally, even in protected and seemingly pristine habitats. These ‘enigmatic declines’ are generated by climate change and infectious diseases. However, the consequences of these declines are undocumented as no baseline ecological data exists for most affected areas. Like other neotropical countries, Costa Rica, including Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in north-western Costa Rica, experienced rapid amphibian population declines and apparent extinctions during the past three decades. To delineate amphibian diversity patterns within ACG, a large-scale comparison of multiple sites and habitats was conducted. Distance and time constrained visual encounter surveys characterised species richness at five sites—Murciélago (dry forest), Santa Rosa (dry forest), Maritza (mid-elevation dry-rain forest intersect), San Gerardo (rainforest) and Cacao (cloud forest). Furthermore, species-richness patterns for Cacao were compared with historic data from 1987–8, before amphibians declined in the area. Rainforests had the highest species richness, with triple the species of their dry forest counterparts. A decline of 45% (20 to 11 species) in amphibian species richness was encountered when comparing historic and contemporary data for Cacao. Conservation efforts sometimes focus on increasing the resilience of protected areas, by increasing their range of ecosystems. In this sense ACG is unique containing many tropical ecosystems compressed in a small geographic space, all protected and recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site. It thus provides an extraordinary platform to understand changes, past and present, and the resilience of tropical ecosystems and assemblages, or lack thereof, to climate change. PeerJ Inc. 2023-11-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10688307/ /pubmed/38034867 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16185 Text en © 2023 Edwards et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Biodiversity Edwards, Alex W. Harrison, Xavier A. Smith, M. Alex Chavarría Díaz, Maria Marta Sasa, Mahmood Janzen, Daniel H. Hallwachs, Winnie Chaves, Gerardo Fernández, Roberto Palmer, Caroline Wilson, Chloe North, Alexandra Puschendorf, Robert Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title | Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title_full | Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title_fullStr | Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title_full_unstemmed | Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title_short | Amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica |
title_sort | amphibian diversity across three adjacent ecosystems in área de conservación guanacaste, costa rica |
topic | Biodiversity |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10688307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38034867 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16185 |
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