Habitat loss and fragmentation is the largest contributing factor to species extinction and declining biodiversity. Landscapes are becoming highly spatially heterogeneous with varying degrees of human modification. Much theoretical study of habitat fragmentation has historically focused on a simple theoretical landscape with patches of habitat surrounded by a spatially homogeneous hostile matrix. However, terrestrial habitat patches are often surrounded by complex mosaics of many different land cover types, which are rarely ecologically neutral or completely inhospitable environments. We employ an extension of a reaction diffusion model to explore effects of heterogeneity in the matrix immediately surrounding a patch in a one-dimensional theoretical landscape. Exact dynamics of a population exhibiting logistic growth, an unbiased random walk in the patch and matrix, habitat preference at the patch/matrix interface, and two functionally different matrix types for the one-dimensional landscape is obtained. These results show existence of a minimum patch size (MPS), below which population persistence is not possible. This MPS can be estimated via empirically derived estimates of patch intrinsic growth rate and diffusion rate, habitat preference, and matrix death and diffusion rates. We conclude that local matrix heterogeneity can greatly change model predictions, and argue that conservation strategies should not only consider patch size, configuration, and quality, but also quality and spatial structure of the surrounding matrix.
- Award ID(s):
- 1655555
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10065692
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Biological conservation
- Volume:
- 226
- ISSN:
- 0006-3207
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 9-15
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Yang Kuang (Ed.)
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Location Atlantic Forest, Brazil.
Methods Using carefully curated point localities, phylogenetic data and parameterized models of species distributions, we generate maps of phylogenetic diversity, phylogenetic endemism and phylogenetic turnover for the entire Atlantic Forest. We map patterns of clade‐specific diversity under complete preservation of forest and then incorporate present‐day deforestation patterns to provide a more realistic scenario.
Results Instead of a singular pattern, three different reoccurring syndromes described the flora and fauna of the Atlantic Forest. These patterns emerged irrespectively of clade age and life history traits. General turnover patterns were highly consistent with previous analyses of species composition and panbiogeographical studies. Deforestation has altered the availability of climatic spaces in the Atlantic Forest, its biological communities and the distribution of evolutionary lineages in space. However, approximately 60% of the pre‐Columbian climatic space persists in forest remnants, and today's biological communities are estimated to be 45% similar to pre‐deforestation times.
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