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A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy
With biodiversity facing unparalleled threats from anthropogenic disturbance, knowledge on the occurrences of species and communities provides for an effective and fast approach to assess their status and vulnerability. Disturbance is most prominent at the landscape-level, for example through habita...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6474625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31002707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215682 |
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author | Cavada, Nathalie Worsøe Havmøller, Rasmus Scharff, Nikolaj Rovero, Francesco |
author_facet | Cavada, Nathalie Worsøe Havmøller, Rasmus Scharff, Nikolaj Rovero, Francesco |
author_sort | Cavada, Nathalie |
collection | PubMed |
description | With biodiversity facing unparalleled threats from anthropogenic disturbance, knowledge on the occurrences of species and communities provides for an effective and fast approach to assess their status and vulnerability. Disturbance is most prominent at the landscape-level, for example through habitat loss from large-scale resource extraction or agriculture. However, addressing species responses to habitat changes at the landscape-scale can be difficult and cost-ineffective, hence studies are mostly conducted at single areas or habitat patches. Moreover, there is a relative lack of studies on communities, as opposed to focal species, despite the former may carry more comprehensive information. Here, we used a multi-region, multi-species hierarchical occupancy model to study a meta-community of mammals detected by camera traps across five distinct areas within a heterogeneous landscape in Tanzania, and aimed to assess responses to human disturbance and environmental variables. Estimated species richness did not vary significantly across different areas, even though these held broadly different habitats. Moreover, we found remarkable consistency in the positive effect of distance to human settlements, a proxy for anthropogenic disturbance, on community occupancy. The positive effect of body size and the positive effect of proximity to rivers on community occupancy were also shared by communities. Results yield conservation relevance because: (1) the among-communities consistency in responses to anthropogenic disturbance, despite the heterogeneity in sampled habitats, indicates that conservation plans designed at the landscape-scale may represent a comprehensive and cost-efficient approach; (2) the consistency in responses to environmental factors suggests that multi-species models are a powerful method to study ecological patterns at the landscape-level. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6474625 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64746252019-05-03 A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy Cavada, Nathalie Worsøe Havmøller, Rasmus Scharff, Nikolaj Rovero, Francesco PLoS One Research Article With biodiversity facing unparalleled threats from anthropogenic disturbance, knowledge on the occurrences of species and communities provides for an effective and fast approach to assess their status and vulnerability. Disturbance is most prominent at the landscape-level, for example through habitat loss from large-scale resource extraction or agriculture. However, addressing species responses to habitat changes at the landscape-scale can be difficult and cost-ineffective, hence studies are mostly conducted at single areas or habitat patches. Moreover, there is a relative lack of studies on communities, as opposed to focal species, despite the former may carry more comprehensive information. Here, we used a multi-region, multi-species hierarchical occupancy model to study a meta-community of mammals detected by camera traps across five distinct areas within a heterogeneous landscape in Tanzania, and aimed to assess responses to human disturbance and environmental variables. Estimated species richness did not vary significantly across different areas, even though these held broadly different habitats. Moreover, we found remarkable consistency in the positive effect of distance to human settlements, a proxy for anthropogenic disturbance, on community occupancy. The positive effect of body size and the positive effect of proximity to rivers on community occupancy were also shared by communities. Results yield conservation relevance because: (1) the among-communities consistency in responses to anthropogenic disturbance, despite the heterogeneity in sampled habitats, indicates that conservation plans designed at the landscape-scale may represent a comprehensive and cost-efficient approach; (2) the consistency in responses to environmental factors suggests that multi-species models are a powerful method to study ecological patterns at the landscape-level. Public Library of Science 2019-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6474625/ /pubmed/31002707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215682 Text en © 2019 Cavada 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, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Cavada, Nathalie Worsøe Havmøller, Rasmus Scharff, Nikolaj Rovero, Francesco A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title | A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title_full | A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title_fullStr | A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title_full_unstemmed | A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title_short | A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
title_sort | landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6474625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31002707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215682 |
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