Land-cover gradients determine alternate drivers of mammalian species richness in fragmented landscapes

Dennis, Matthew, Huck, J.J., Holt, Claire ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3635-5404 , Bispo, P. da Conceição, McHenry, E., Speak, A. and James, P. (2024) Land-cover gradients determine alternate drivers of mammalian species richness in fragmented landscapes. Landscape Ecology, 39 (8). article no. 146.

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Abstract

Context: Understanding habitat fragmentation is a critical concern for nature conservation and the focus of intense debate in landscape ecology. Resolving the uncertainty around the effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity remains an ongoing challenge that requires the successful delineation of multiple patch-landscape interactions.

Objectives: We carried out a regional analysis on species richness of woodland mammals to determine the relative influence of structural, compositional and functional characteristics related to woodland habitat across different land-cover gradients.

Methods: We calculated the Edge-weighted Habitat Index, an area-weighted measure of functional connectivity that incorporates a mechanistic estimate of edge-effects, for interior woodland habitat. We compared its influence on mammalian species richness to that of increasing edge and patch density, landscape diversity, and a habitat-only model, in different contexts of matrix hostility across Northern England in the UK.

Results: Our results demonstrate the relevance of alternative drivers of species richness resulting from patch-landscape interactions across gradients of matrix hostility. Evidence is provided for positive and negative effects of increasing structural (edge density), functional (connected interior habitat) and compositional (landscape diversity) attributes, varying according to matrix type and intensity. Results were sensitive to dominant land-cover types in the matrix and the scale of observation.

Conclusion: This study provides new insights into fragmentation effects on biodiversity and clarifies assumptions around the relative influence of structural, compositional and functional habitat characteristics on landscape-level species richness. We highlight the presence of thresholds, related to matrix hostility, that determine alternative drivers of species richness in woodland mammals. These drivers, and related thresholds, were sensitive to the scale of observation and landscape context. Landscape decisions aimed at promoting biodiversity should consider sources of matrix hostility and homogeneity at scales relevant to ecological processes of interest.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Landscape Ecology
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	1572-9761
Departments:	Institute of Science and Environment > Forestry and Conservation
Additional Information:	Claire D. Holt, Senior Lecturer in Forestry and Conservation, University of Cumbria, UK. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Depositing User:	Insight Administrator
SWORD Depositor:	Insight Administrator
Date Deposited:	05 Aug 2024 15:14
Last Modified:	05 Aug 2024 15:15
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/7826

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