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Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?

Agricultural practices lead to losses of natural resources and biodiversity. Maintaining forests alongside streams (riparian forest strips) has been used as a mechanism to minimize the impact of clearing for agriculture on biodiversity. To test the contribution of riparian forest strips to conserve...

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Autores principales: Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah, Loiselle, Bette A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31015998
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5048
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author Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah
Loiselle, Bette A.
author_facet Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah
Loiselle, Bette A.
author_sort Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah
collection PubMed
description Agricultural practices lead to losses of natural resources and biodiversity. Maintaining forests alongside streams (riparian forest strips) has been used as a mechanism to minimize the impact of clearing for agriculture on biodiversity. To test the contribution of riparian forest strips to conserve biodiversity in production landscapes, we selected bats as a biodiversity model system and examined two dimensions of diversity: taxonomic and functional. We compared bat diversity and composition in forest, with and without stream habitat, and in narrow forest riparian strips surrounded by areas cleared for agriculture. We tested the hypothesis that riparian forest strips provide potential conservation value by providing habitat and serving as movement corridors for forest bat species. Riparian forest strips maintained 75% of the bat species registered in forested habitats. We found assemblage in sites with riparian forest strips were dominated by a few species with high abundance and included several species with low abundance. Bat species assemblage was more similar between sites with streams than between those sites to forests without stream habitat. These results highlight the importance of stream habitat in predicting presence of bat species. We registered similar number of guilds between forest sites and riparian forest strips sites. Relative to matrix habitats, stream and edge habitats in riparian forest strips sites were functionally more diverse, supporting our hypothesis about the potential conservation value of riparian forest strips. Results from this study suggest that maintaining riparian forest strips within cleared areas for agricultural areas helps conserve the taxonomic and functional diversity of bats. Also, it provides basic data to evaluate the efficacy of maintaining these landscape features for mitigating impacts of agricultural development on biodiversity. However, we caution that riparian forest strips alone are not sufficient for biodiversity maintenance; their value depends on maintenance of larger forest areas in their vicinity.
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spelling pubmed-64678602019-04-23 Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity? Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah Loiselle, Bette A. Ecol Evol Original Research Agricultural practices lead to losses of natural resources and biodiversity. Maintaining forests alongside streams (riparian forest strips) has been used as a mechanism to minimize the impact of clearing for agriculture on biodiversity. To test the contribution of riparian forest strips to conserve biodiversity in production landscapes, we selected bats as a biodiversity model system and examined two dimensions of diversity: taxonomic and functional. We compared bat diversity and composition in forest, with and without stream habitat, and in narrow forest riparian strips surrounded by areas cleared for agriculture. We tested the hypothesis that riparian forest strips provide potential conservation value by providing habitat and serving as movement corridors for forest bat species. Riparian forest strips maintained 75% of the bat species registered in forested habitats. We found assemblage in sites with riparian forest strips were dominated by a few species with high abundance and included several species with low abundance. Bat species assemblage was more similar between sites with streams than between those sites to forests without stream habitat. These results highlight the importance of stream habitat in predicting presence of bat species. We registered similar number of guilds between forest sites and riparian forest strips sites. Relative to matrix habitats, stream and edge habitats in riparian forest strips sites were functionally more diverse, supporting our hypothesis about the potential conservation value of riparian forest strips. Results from this study suggest that maintaining riparian forest strips within cleared areas for agricultural areas helps conserve the taxonomic and functional diversity of bats. Also, it provides basic data to evaluate the efficacy of maintaining these landscape features for mitigating impacts of agricultural development on biodiversity. However, we caution that riparian forest strips alone are not sufficient for biodiversity maintenance; their value depends on maintenance of larger forest areas in their vicinity. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-03-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6467860/ /pubmed/31015998 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5048 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Carrasco‐Rueda, Farah
Loiselle, Bette A.
Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title_full Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title_fullStr Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title_full_unstemmed Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title_short Do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
title_sort do riparian forest strips in modified forest landscapes aid in conserving bat diversity?
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31015998
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5048
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