Testing the habitat amount hypothesis and fragmentation effects for medium- and large-sized mammals in a biodiversity hotspot

Spatial predictors and species’ traits: evaluating what really matters for medium‐sized and large mammals in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil

“…The occurrence of the overall mammal species in forest fragments was strongly related to patch size, anthropogenic disturbances, and body mass. These results partially confirm our predictions, as we initially expected stronger influence of forest cover as previously observed for patterns of mammal species richness in the Atlantic Forest (see Rios et al 2021). This shows that, for Atlantic Forest mammals, greater occupancy is observed within large forest fragments surrounded by lower road density and exhibiting higher human density, including species showing greater body mass.…”

“…Further, we expected that species would exhibit different responses to the variables we examined, according to their ecological and habitat requirements. As previously found for medium‐sized and large mammal species richness (Rios et al 2021), we specifically predicted that: 1) occurrence of hunted forest‐dependent species would be affected positively by forest cover and negatively by road density and human population, given their susceptibility to hunting (Cullen et al 2001, Peres & Palacios 2007); 2) occurrence of non‐hunted forest‐dependent species would mostly be explained by positive forest cover effects, and 3) occurrence of generalist species would mainly and positively be affected by anthropogenic disturbances and landscape configuration variables, due to the great plasticity of habitat use by these species (see Appendix ). We also expected a positive effect of patch size, as shown for mammals in other Neotropical forest landscapes (Michalski & Peres 2005, Canale et al 2012).…”

Mammals of Cajuru State Forest and surroundings: a neglected but important Protected Area for the Cerrado conservation in the São Paulo state, Brazil

“…First, the presence of some species could be related to the landscape configuration, apart from native vegetation proportion. Contrasting to the overall mammal species (Melo et al 2017, Rios et al 2021, the richness of medium and large-sized herbivores seems to be better predicted and negatively affected by the number of patches in the landscape (Rios et al, 2021), and native vegetation are much more fragmented in our study area (9.4 patches/100 ha) than in the JES landscape (2.1 patches/100 ha). This effect may be especially true for those species with a large body size such as the tapir, since our sampled fragments may not be large enough to sustain a species with large spatial requirements for native vegetation (Medici et al 2012), even though its current presence in JES could be represented by just one or a few individuals (Rodrigues et al 2014).…”

“…We found very similar values when we compare the estimated richness in our study area with the JES landscape, the largest protected area of the Cerrado of São Paulo state (Paolino et al 2016). This equivalence might be a consequence of the similar proportion of native vegetation covering both areas (37.7% in JES landscape; 38.3% in our study area) since the large-sized mammal's richness in the Neotropics seems to be most affected by this parameter (Rios et al 2021). Only four species detected in the JES landscape were not detected in the present study: tapir (Tapirus terrestris), marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus), capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), and Brazilian guinea pig (Cavia aperea) (Table 3).…”

Bioindicadores para avaliação e monitoramento da restauração ecológica de área em ambiente de mineração de bauxita, Miraí, MG

“…Diante dessa estreita relação espécie-área, a perda de habitat e fragmentação são as principais ameaças para os mamíferos (Rios et al 2021). Desse modo, os projetos de Dentre os vertebrados terrestres, os anfíbios apresentam o maior nível de ameaça, e em regiões neotropicais, o estado de conservação é ainda mais crítico ( IUCN 2021).…”