Assessing how habitat loss restricts the geographic range of Neotropical anurans

Abstract

Habitat loss and fragmentation exert unquestionable negative effects in a wide range of taxa on both regional and local scales. However, there is a debate over whether habitat change impacts geographic species distribution. We assess how habitat loss restricts large‐scale species distribution on a geographic scale for four South American anurans that are known to occur in well conserved habitats, yet which are absent in others that are close by and more degraded. We used occurrence records of each species in Brazil and performed different modeling algorithms to compare ensemble distribution models generated by two different sets of predictors: a climate‐only versus a climate‐habitat procedure. We found that the distribution area predicted by the climate‐only procedure was larger than that of the climate‐habitat procedure for all species. The areas not predicted by the climate‐habitat but predicted by the climate‐only procedure for all species are commonly located in inland areas in southeastern Brazil, which coincides with areas that have suffered the most from habitat loss in the country. Plotting the predictions against well‐surveyed areas where the species have not been recorded, we found evidence that habitat loss may have restricted the current geographic ranges of Hypsiboas faber and Rhinella ornata. Finally, modeling approaches incorporating habitat landscape metrics, particularly for habitat‐specialist species, may be a helpful tool for identifying areas that harbored these species before deforestation took place.

Living in a changing world: effects of roads andPinusmonocultures on an anuran metacommunity in southern Brazil

“…The main fact to be highlighted here, however, is that even species with wide geographical distribution, and considered to be undemanding in terms of habitat integrity, were susceptible to the presence of monocultures surrounding the ponds where they occur. Habitat loss and modification restrict the occurrence and distribution of neotropical anurans (including generalist species) at different spatial and geographical scales (Vasconcelos & Doro, 2016), which supports the idea that the loss of evolutionary lineages in modified landscapes does not occur at random.…”

“…Also, the presence of these forestry monocultures in areas originally formed by grasslands may create physical barriers that hinder the movement of species that do not have specialized morphological traits to climb the vegetation (adhesive discs, for example; Dalmolin et al, 2020). In addition, these monocultures may represent an insurmountable discontinuity between optimal aquatic and terrestrial habitats, which is particularly serious for anurans that depend directly on both habitats (Vasconcelos & Doro, 2016). On the other hand, anurans with higher reproduction rates and rapidly reaching sexual maturity may be less susceptible to road or exotic plantation effects (Grace, Smith & Noss, 2017) and may thrive in the absence of more sensitive species.…”

Colonization of different biomes drove the diversification of the Neotropical Eidmanacris crickets (Insecta: Orthoptera: Grylloidea: Phalangopsidae)

“…As mentioned above, gallery forests are known to act as remnant humid forests in dry and open regions and as dispersal corridors, allowing forest-dwelling species to reach the savanna areas [ 82 ]. This pattern of distribution is also documented for plants [ 18 , 20 , 21 ], butterflies [ 21 , 83 , 84 ], anurans [ 85 ], lizards [ 86 ], mammals [ 24 , 87 ] and birds [ 26 , 88 ].…”

Estimating the impact of climate change on the potential distribution of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins with species distribution model

“…Currently, SDMs are applied broadly in the life and environmental science fields (Cheung et al, 2009;Robinson et al, 2011). For example, multiple types of SDM are available to predict the impacts of climate change on species distributions (Zhang et al, 2019), to assess how habitat loss restricts large-scale species distribution (Vasconcelos & Doro, 2016)), to understand biological invasions (Zhang et al, 2020a) and to site aquaculture farms (Dong et al, 2020). Accordingly, the use of SDMs in conservation biology and biodiversity assessments is ever-increasing (Araujo et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020b).…”