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Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator
One of the key drivers of pollinator declines is land cover change. We documented for the first time the impacts of over three decades of land cover change in Mexico on the plant resources of an endangered migratory pollinator, the Mexican long-nosed bat, Leptonycteris nivalis. This species is consi...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8500086/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34707921 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11990 |
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author | Gómez-Ruiz, Emma P. Lacher Jr, Thomas E. Moreno-Talamantes, Antonio Flores Maldonado, José Juan |
author_facet | Gómez-Ruiz, Emma P. Lacher Jr, Thomas E. Moreno-Talamantes, Antonio Flores Maldonado, José Juan |
author_sort | Gómez-Ruiz, Emma P. |
collection | PubMed |
description | One of the key drivers of pollinator declines is land cover change. We documented for the first time the impacts of over three decades of land cover change in Mexico on the plant resources of an endangered migratory pollinator, the Mexican long-nosed bat, Leptonycteris nivalis. This species is considered endangered under national and international criteria due to population declines over 50% in the past 10 years. Pregnant females of this bat species migrate every year following the blooms of Agave spp. from central Mexico to the southern United States; moving pollen over its 1,200 km long migratory corridor and pollinating distant populations of Agave spp. Increases in human populations density and agricultural expansion may be reducing agave habitat over time. The objective of our study is to understand the land cover change trends in the northern range of the bat and identify potential fragmentation patterns in the region. We analyzed changes that occurred in three vegetation types where agaves are found in five time periods 1985, 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2011. The area of the three vegetation types selected was reduced by using only the overlap with potential agave habitat created with ecological niche modeling algorithms to obtain the available agave habitat. We then calculated fragmentation metrics for each period. We found a significant portion of habitat lost mainly due to expansion in agriculture. The total number of patches increased after 1985. Only 9% of the available agave habitat in 2011 is inside the limits of protected areas. We recommend restoring agave populations in depleted areas to help prevent soil erosion and provide multiple socio-economic benefits for the region in the short term, and, in the long-term maintaining foraging resources for nectar-feeding bats. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8500086 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85000862021-10-26 Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator Gómez-Ruiz, Emma P. Lacher Jr, Thomas E. Moreno-Talamantes, Antonio Flores Maldonado, José Juan PeerJ Conservation Biology One of the key drivers of pollinator declines is land cover change. We documented for the first time the impacts of over three decades of land cover change in Mexico on the plant resources of an endangered migratory pollinator, the Mexican long-nosed bat, Leptonycteris nivalis. This species is considered endangered under national and international criteria due to population declines over 50% in the past 10 years. Pregnant females of this bat species migrate every year following the blooms of Agave spp. from central Mexico to the southern United States; moving pollen over its 1,200 km long migratory corridor and pollinating distant populations of Agave spp. Increases in human populations density and agricultural expansion may be reducing agave habitat over time. The objective of our study is to understand the land cover change trends in the northern range of the bat and identify potential fragmentation patterns in the region. We analyzed changes that occurred in three vegetation types where agaves are found in five time periods 1985, 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2011. The area of the three vegetation types selected was reduced by using only the overlap with potential agave habitat created with ecological niche modeling algorithms to obtain the available agave habitat. We then calculated fragmentation metrics for each period. We found a significant portion of habitat lost mainly due to expansion in agriculture. The total number of patches increased after 1985. Only 9% of the available agave habitat in 2011 is inside the limits of protected areas. We recommend restoring agave populations in depleted areas to help prevent soil erosion and provide multiple socio-economic benefits for the region in the short term, and, in the long-term maintaining foraging resources for nectar-feeding bats. PeerJ Inc. 2021-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8500086/ /pubmed/34707921 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11990 Text en ©2021 Gómez-Ruiz 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 | Conservation Biology Gómez-Ruiz, Emma P. Lacher Jr, Thomas E. Moreno-Talamantes, Antonio Flores Maldonado, José Juan Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title | Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title_full | Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title_fullStr | Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title_full_unstemmed | Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title_short | Impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
title_sort | impacts of land cover change on the plant resources of an endangered pollinator |
topic | Conservation Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8500086/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34707921 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11990 |
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