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Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities

In countries with high levels of urbanization, protected areas are often subject to human disturbance. In addition to dealing with fragmentation, land managers also have to confront the loss of characteristic ecosystems due to biotic homogenization, which is the increasing similarity of species asse...

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Autores principales: Angulo, Elena, Boulay, Raphaël, Ruano, Francisca, Tinaut, Alberto, Cerdá, Xim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5160926/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27994978
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2773
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author Angulo, Elena
Boulay, Raphaël
Ruano, Francisca
Tinaut, Alberto
Cerdá, Xim
author_facet Angulo, Elena
Boulay, Raphaël
Ruano, Francisca
Tinaut, Alberto
Cerdá, Xim
author_sort Angulo, Elena
collection PubMed
description In countries with high levels of urbanization, protected areas are often subject to human disturbance. In addition to dealing with fragmentation, land managers also have to confront the loss of characteristic ecosystems due to biotic homogenization, which is the increasing similarity of species assemblages among geographically separate regions. Using ants as a model system, we explored whether anthropogenic factors negatively affect biodiversity of protected areas of a regional network. We first analysed the effect of fragmentation and human activity on ant biodiversity within protected areas. Secondly, we tested whether homogenization could occur among protected areas. We sampled 79 plots in the most common habitats of 32 protected areas in southern Spain and calculated ant community richness and diversity indices, endemic richness, and Bray–Curtis similarity indices (between pairs of plots). We related these indices with patch fragmentation and human disturbance variables, taking into account environmental, spatial and landscape covariates. We used ANOSIM to test for differences between similarity indices, specifically among levels of anthropogenic disturbance. Species richness was positively correlated with the distance from the border of the protected areas and the number of endemic species was negatively correlated with the degree of fragmentation. Ant communities were similar within each protected area but differed across regions. Human disturbance was not correlated with community similarity among sampling points. Our approach suggests how the ability of European protected areas to sustain biodiversity is limited because they remain susceptible to anthropogenic impacts. Although ant communities maintained their biological distinctiveness, we reveal how fragmentation within protected areas is important for community richness and endemism maintenance.
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spelling pubmed-51609262016-12-19 Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities Angulo, Elena Boulay, Raphaël Ruano, Francisca Tinaut, Alberto Cerdá, Xim PeerJ Biodiversity In countries with high levels of urbanization, protected areas are often subject to human disturbance. In addition to dealing with fragmentation, land managers also have to confront the loss of characteristic ecosystems due to biotic homogenization, which is the increasing similarity of species assemblages among geographically separate regions. Using ants as a model system, we explored whether anthropogenic factors negatively affect biodiversity of protected areas of a regional network. We first analysed the effect of fragmentation and human activity on ant biodiversity within protected areas. Secondly, we tested whether homogenization could occur among protected areas. We sampled 79 plots in the most common habitats of 32 protected areas in southern Spain and calculated ant community richness and diversity indices, endemic richness, and Bray–Curtis similarity indices (between pairs of plots). We related these indices with patch fragmentation and human disturbance variables, taking into account environmental, spatial and landscape covariates. We used ANOSIM to test for differences between similarity indices, specifically among levels of anthropogenic disturbance. Species richness was positively correlated with the distance from the border of the protected areas and the number of endemic species was negatively correlated with the degree of fragmentation. Ant communities were similar within each protected area but differed across regions. Human disturbance was not correlated with community similarity among sampling points. Our approach suggests how the ability of European protected areas to sustain biodiversity is limited because they remain susceptible to anthropogenic impacts. Although ant communities maintained their biological distinctiveness, we reveal how fragmentation within protected areas is important for community richness and endemism maintenance. PeerJ Inc. 2016-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5160926/ /pubmed/27994978 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2773 Text en ©2016 Angulo et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://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
Angulo, Elena
Boulay, Raphaël
Ruano, Francisca
Tinaut, Alberto
Cerdá, Xim
Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title_full Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title_fullStr Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title_full_unstemmed Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title_short Anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using Mediterranean ant communities
title_sort anthropogenic impacts in protected areas: assessing the efficiency of conservation efforts using mediterranean ant communities
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5160926/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27994978
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2773
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