Current socioeconomic drivers of land-use change associated with globalization are producing two contrasting land-use trends in Latin America. Increasing global food demand (particularly in Southeast Asia) accelerates deforestation in areas suitable for modern agriculture (e.g., soybean), severely threatening ecosystems, such as Amazonian rain forests, dry forests, and subtropical grasslands. Additionally, in the coming decades, demand for biofuels may become an emerging threat. In contrast, high yields in modern agricultural systems and rural-urban migration coupled with remittances promote the abandonment of marginal agricultural lands, thus favoring ecosystem recovery on mountains, deserts, and areas of poor soils, while improving human well-being. The potential switch from production in traditional extensive grazing areas to intensive modern agriculture provides opportunities to significantly increase food production while sparing land for nature conservation. This combination of emerging threats and opportunities requires changes in the way the conservation of Latin American ecosystems is approached. Land-use efficiency should be analyzed beyond the local-based paradigm that drives most conservation programs, and focus on large geographic scales involving long-distance fluxes of products, information, and people in order to maximize both agricultural production and the conservation of environmental services.
The bird and amphibian communities of Puerto Rico have high levels of diversity and endemism. Although Puerto Rico has a very high density of roads and high levels of noise pollution, presently 40% of the island is covered in forest. I will address the following questions: Do high levels of anthropogenic noise change species composition of amphibians and birds? Are amphibians and birds modifying the time of calling and/or characteristics of their vocalization in response to anthropogenic noise? I collected sound recordings in two habitats. For recordings I used the automated recording devices developed by our research group. Each recording device was programmed to record for 7 consecutive days; 1 min every 20 min. Previous results showed that noise influences the bird community composition in secondary lowland forest sites, but not in karst forest. Another possibility is that bird and amphibian use other strategies to minimize the effect of noise. This can involve evolutionary changes in signal characteristics, as a long term adaptation or the species may be adjusting signal traits in response to variations in noise levels as a short term adaptation. I will answer these questions when I do analyzing all data.
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