It is generally assumed that when natural habitat is converted to human-dominated cover such area is “lost” to its native species. Extinctions will ensue. The literature generally assumes that species are extirpated as natural area is reduced, following the well-known species-area relationship (SAR). However, SARs have consistently over-estimated species losses resulting from conversion of natural habitat to human-dominated land covers. We hypothesize that the overestimation occurs because these area-based models assume that converted habitat is “lost”, eliminating all species. However, in the real world, conversion of natural land cover to human-dominated cover frequently produces new land covers, different from the original habitat, but not necessarily completely inhospitable to biodiversity. We evaluated the responses of total avian richness, forest bird richness and open habitat bird richness to remaining natural area within 991 quadrats, each 100 km2, across southern Ontario. Total bird species richness does not follow SAR predictions; rather, the number of bird species peaks at roughly 50% natural land cover. The richness of forest birds does follow the usual SAR power-law as a function of forested area. In contrast, richness of birds that prefer open-habitat does not increase monotonically with either natural- or human-dominated land cover. However, we can partition human-dominated land cover into an “available human-dominated” component and “lost” habitat. Richness of open-habitat species relates to the amount of available human-dominated cover. Distinguishing three habitat types (natural, available human-dominated, and lost) permits accurate predictions of species losses in response to natural habitat conversion.

Deep-sea benthic ecosystems remain poorly studied in South Africa, limiting understanding of community biodiversity patterns and their environmental drivers. This is one of the first studies to (i) visually investigate marine epifaunal community patterns and their environmental drivers along the Agulhas ecoregion outer shelf, shelf edge and upper slope to support marine ecosystem classification and mapping, and (ii) to determine the conservation targets for selected national marine ecosystem types to inform improved management of the marine environment, through Marine Spatial Planning processes. Visual surveys of the seabed were conducted to quantify epifauna during the ACEP Deep Secrets Cruise in 2016, using a towed benthic camera system. Twenty-nine sites were sampled, ranging from 120-700 m in depth and spanning the shelf-slope transition from the western edge of the Agulhas Bank to offshore of the Kei River mouth. A total of 855 seabed images were processed, and 173 benthic taxa quantified. Corresponding environmental variables were used to determine potential drivers of observed biodiversity patterns. Data were analysed using multivariate analyses, including CLUSTER, MDS and DistLM, in PRIMER v6 with PERMANOVA. Ten different epifaunal communities were classified and described with key characteristic taxa identified. Communities found in habitats that comprised mostly hard rocky substrata generally exhibited higher in species richness and were most commonly characterized by stalked crinoids, various corals and bryozoans, whereas communities found in habitats comprising unconsolidated sediment were lower in species richness and commonly characterized by polychaetes, cerianthids and brittle stars. Communities found in habitats comprising both hard and soft substrata had a mix of the above-mentioned epifauna. The distribution of these communities was mostly influenced by substratum type, longitude, trawling intensity, depth, and presence of visible particulate organic matter. The combined interactions of topography, substratum and the unique hydrodynamic conditions along the Agulhas ecoregion shelf-slope transition are likely responsible for the observed patterns. The observed community patterns were also compared to the existing classification of marine ecosystem types from the 2018 National Biodiversity Assessment. Fine-scale heterogeneity was revealed within the examined marine ecosystem types, particularly with substratum type and associated community variability and should be recognized and incorporated into future iterations of the national marine ecosystem classification and map. Species-area curves were used to calculate conservation targets for three ecosystem types, defined by the 2018 National Biodiversity Assessment, namely the Agulhas Coarse Sediment Shelf Edge, South West Indian Upper Slope, and the Agulhas Rocky Shelf Edge. Considering the epifaunal species richness (using the bootstrap estimator) and area, per image and per ecosystem type, the rate of accumulation of species was calculated and used to estimate the percentage of species expected to be represented by any given percentage of protected ecosystem type area. Between 20 and 30% of the area within these ecosystem types will need to be protected to represent 80% of the species. This study has shown that an integration of environmental parameters together with biodiversity measures to better understand and classify offshore benthic ecosystems has worked well. However, to improve the resolution of the national marine ecosystem classification and map, there needs to be greater input of fine-scale biological and environmental sampling and mapping of substratum types across the Agulhas ecoregion shelf-slope transition zone. This work is contributing to improvements in the national marine ecosystem classification and map and hence the spatial assessment and planning processes that rely on these products.

Metacommunity connectivity, i.e., multi-species dispersal events, is vital to metapopulation persistence in patchy landscapes. Assessments of metacommunity connectivity are not trivial. However, a relationship between trophic rank and the species-area relationship has been found in previous studies, allowing for the use of the predator species-area relationship to act as a surrogate measure of actual metacommunity connectivity of prey species in some systems. For this study, avian species were selected as they are generalist top predators within the study system. Predator species richness within geographically isolated freshwater marshes is influenced by a number of factors. I explore the relative roles of patch area, seasonality, hydroperiod, isolation, and vegetation structure on habitat use in the isolated freshwater marshes embedded within the dry prairie ecosystem of Central Florida. Predator species richness was surveyed in 50 sites for three seasons: fall 2005, winter 2005/06, and spring 2006 and the observed avian assemblage measures were subdivided into foraging guilds for analysis. Wading guild (e.g., egrets, herons, bitterns) species richness was correlated with hydroperiod and vegetation structural variables while perching guild (e.g., blackbirds, sparrows, meadowlarks) species richness was correlated with isolation, hydroperiod, and area annually. Overall predator and all guild species richness measures were also correlated with patch area for all seasons. These results suggest that while a complex mixture of patch area, hydroperiod and isolation influence habitat utilization that varies by season and at the community, guild and individual species level, the underlying predictors that define habitat use in wetlands annually includes hydroperiod, and is not exclusively patch area. Additionally, seasonal differences in predator species richness were found to be significant in some cases indicating that future avian population studies may benefit by sampling outside of the normally studied spring breeding season. Results of this study support the use of predator species richness as a suitable assay of metacommunity connectivity of prey species. Applications and implications of this approach toward future conservation efforts are discussed.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-02-25Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:01:01Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 bispo_aa_dr_sjrp.pdf: 1875837 bytes, checksum: 6139dc36c7ba0eb1ab24a12c0fbae7ad (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / A fragmentação florestal é uma das principais ameaças a diversidade de aves sendo responsável por grande parte das extinções de espécies em florestas tropicais. Os efeitos da fragmentação florestal sobre a diversidade de espécies em remanescentes devem ser analisados em diferentes escalas com a finalidade de uma melhor interpretação de suas conseqüências sobre cada espécie ou grupo de espécies. Desta forma, este estudo procurou responder três perguntas que geraram as hipóteses de trabalho desenvolvidas em cada capítulo. 1) Quais espécies ocorrem na região noroeste do estado de São Paulo? 2) Como a paisagem do entorno dos remanescentes florestais influencia a riqueza e os grupos funcionais de aves? 3) Na escala do fragmento, como as variáveis ambientais influenciam a riqueza de espécies e a distribuição dos grupos funcionais nos remanescentes florestais? As respostas dessas perguntas seguem um gradiente de relação, de um fator regional até o local. Foram registradas 328 espécies para a região. As origens dos registros permitiram supor que os exclusivamente históricos foram de espécies que não ocorram mais localmente. Essas espécies apresentaram uma forte relação com as categorias propostas, sendo que 75% delas possuem algum tipo de dependência com o ambiente florestal, 63% estão categorizadas como ameaçadas de extinção para o estado de São Paulo e 34% pertencem a algum centro de endemismo. Na escala da paisagem, a distância adotada como paisagem de entorno e os requerimentos ecológicos de cada grupo funcional são responsáveis pelas relações com os componentes da paisagem. Na escala do fragmento, as similaridades entre os remanescentes florestais de acordo com as variáveis estruturais e os grupos funcionais nem sempre foram concordantes. As relações positivas entre o tamanho de área e porcentagem de área nuclear com a riqueza... / Forest fragmentation is one of the major threats to bird diversity and is responsible for most of the extinctions of species in tropical forests. The effects of forest fragmentation on the species diversity in forest remnants should be analyzed at different scales in order to a better interpretation of the consequences for each species or species groups. The presented thesis was therefore structured in three chapters that address questions which reflect these differente scales 1) Which species occur in the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo? 2) How influences the landscapes the species richness and the functional groups of birds? 3) How are species richness and distribution of functional groups in forest remnants influenced by environmental variables on the patch scale? The answers to these questions follow a gradient, of a regional to a local scale. The records of our assessment and former studies, performed in this region, include 328 species for the northwestern region, but show discrepancies in species composition between the former and the present status. Some species have thus apparently vanished regionally. We structured the records in three categories representing forest dependence, threat status, and endemism. The species that have regionally vanished show a strong relationship with the categories: 75% depend somehow on the forest habitat, 63% are categorized as endangered in the state of São Paulo, and 34% are endemic to four endemism centers. At the landscape scale, the surrounding landscape and the ecological requirements of each functional group describe the relations of bird functional groups and bird species richness to the components of the landscape. On patch scale the multivariate analysis showed that the similarities between remnants according structural variable and functional groups, sometimes disagree. The positive relationship... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Conservation of wood-decaying fungi requires improved knowledge about the long-term effects of forest management; regarding habitat loss, fragmentation and fire suppression. To better understand such effects, I examined the influence of area, isolation, fire history and forest stand characteristics on communities of wood-decaying fungi. Species richness and composition were studied along a gradient of 22 forested islands varying in size (0.16 to 17.58 ha) and fire history (spanning 5000 years) in a boreal forest archipelago in northern Sweden. A total of 490 records of 41 polypore species were found in 33 circular plots, each 0.1 ha in size. Species richness and the number of red-listed species were analyzed using generalized linear models (GLMs), while species composition was examined using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination. The species composition was clearly different between recent-fire (< 300 years since last fire) and old-fire (≥ 300 years since last fire) islands, mirroring the shift in tree species composition as pine-associated fungal species were replaced by spruce-associated fungal species. The volume of logs was the only variable influencing the species richness, although the diversity of logs showed a clear trend of also influencing species richness positively. The results demonstrate the importance of having both recent-fire and old-fire forests as landscape-level habitats and species pools, where fire naturally would constitute a key role for maintaining forest biodiversity in the boreal forest landscape. The results also stress the importance of dead wood for species richness at the individual forest stands.

Orientador: Wagner André Pedro / Banca: Denise Cerqueira Rossa-Feres / Banca: Paulo De Marco Júnior / Banca: Rômulo Ribon / Banca: Luiz Dino Vizotto / Resumo: A fragmentação florestal é uma das principais ameaças a diversidade de aves sendo responsável por grande parte das extinções de espécies em florestas tropicais. Os efeitos da fragmentação florestal sobre a diversidade de espécies em remanescentes devem ser analisados em diferentes escalas com a finalidade de uma melhor interpretação de suas conseqüências sobre cada espécie ou grupo de espécies. Desta forma, este estudo procurou responder três perguntas que geraram as hipóteses de trabalho desenvolvidas em cada capítulo. 1) Quais espécies ocorrem na região noroeste do estado de São Paulo? 2) Como a paisagem do entorno dos remanescentes florestais influencia a riqueza e os grupos funcionais de aves? 3) Na escala do fragmento, como as variáveis ambientais influenciam a riqueza de espécies e a distribuição dos grupos funcionais nos remanescentes florestais? As respostas dessas perguntas seguem um gradiente de relação, de um fator regional até o local. Foram registradas 328 espécies para a região. As origens dos registros permitiram supor que os exclusivamente históricos foram de espécies que não ocorram mais localmente. Essas espécies apresentaram uma forte relação com as categorias propostas, sendo que 75% delas possuem algum tipo de dependência com o ambiente florestal, 63% estão categorizadas como ameaçadas de extinção para o estado de São Paulo e 34% pertencem a algum centro de endemismo. Na escala da paisagem, a distância adotada como paisagem de entorno e os requerimentos ecológicos de cada grupo funcional são responsáveis pelas relações com os componentes da paisagem. Na escala do fragmento, as similaridades entre os remanescentes florestais de acordo com as variáveis estruturais e os grupos funcionais nem sempre foram concordantes. As relações positivas entre o tamanho de área e porcentagem de área nuclear com a riqueza... (resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Forest fragmentation is one of the major threats to bird diversity and is responsible for most of the extinctions of species in tropical forests. The effects of forest fragmentation on the species diversity in forest remnants should be analyzed at different scales in order to a better interpretation of the consequences for each species or species groups. The presented thesis was therefore structured in three chapters that address questions which reflect these differente scales 1) Which species occur in the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo? 2) How influences the landscapes the species richness and the functional groups of birds? 3) How are species richness and distribution of functional groups in forest remnants influenced by environmental variables on the patch scale? The answers to these questions follow a gradient, of a regional to a local scale. The records of our assessment and former studies, performed in this region, include 328 species for the northwestern region, but show discrepancies in species composition between the former and the present status. Some species have thus apparently vanished regionally. We structured the records in three categories representing forest dependence, threat status, and endemism. The species that have regionally vanished show a strong relationship with the categories: 75% depend somehow on the forest habitat, 63% are categorized as endangered in the state of São Paulo, and 34% are endemic to four endemism centers. At the landscape scale, the surrounding landscape and the ecological requirements of each functional group describe the relations of bird functional groups and bird species richness to the components of the landscape. On patch scale the multivariate analysis showed that the similarities between remnants according structural variable and functional groups, sometimes disagree. The positive relationship... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Submitted by (ana.araujo@ufrpe.br) on 2016-07-07T15:36:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Katiane Silva Conceicao.pdf: 4363127 bytes, checksum: bdfcba6d5b398e4cc048b2d41e232da1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-07T15:36:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Katiane Silva Conceicao.pdf: 4363127 bytes, checksum: bdfcba6d5b398e4cc048b2d41e232da1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-12-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Despite the complexity of factors that influence the growth and dispersion of individuals in species, some general patterns are observed in the study of ecosystems. One of these patterns is the relationship between the number of species and the size of the area occupied by these species (species-area relationship). This relationship is one of the oldest rules of ecology and has been used to estimate population distributions, species diversity of animals and plants.In this work, the main objective was to determine how the habitat fragmentation affects the behavior of the species-area relationship, based on the colonization of an area or region without any existence of life. The model was built to describe the occupation of a determined area by species. Bidimensional lattices, containing sites, represent these areas. For each site is attributed a capacity, which is characterized by the amount of resources available to people who will colonize the area. Each species has been assigned a f itness, which is defined as the sum of the capacities of sites colonized by the same species. In the process of colonization, mutations can occur causing an increase of the diversity of species. The proposed modelwas extended to simulate fragmented habitats as well. In this situation were considered lattices containing a proportion of sites not available for colonization. For the analysis of the pattern of that relationship, it was considered sampled areas in two contexts: different evolutionary histories and continents. It was observed that the sampling procedure changes the shape of the species-area curve. The analysis of the behavior of the system in the context of different evolutionary histories, shows that increasing the proportion of sites that can not be occupied p, there was an increase in the value of the exponent z for the different scale regions in power laws for large a value, indicating faster growth of diversity in relation to the case where the lattice is not fragmented. Considering the context of continents, it was noted that there are three scaling regions described by power laws for some values of a. However, as the proportion p of sites that can not be colonized was increased, there was a reduction in the number of laws for large a value. It was found that the value of exponent z is higher in large areas. Analyzing the distribution of the species size, it appears that the fragmentation increases the frequency of species with smaller populations. / Apesar da complexidade de fatores que influenciam o crescimento e a dispersão de indivíduos em espécies, alguns padrões gerais são observados no estudo de ecossistemas. Um desses padrões é a relação entre o número de espécies e o tamanho da área ocupada por elas (relação espécie-área). Esta relação é uma das regras mais antigas da ecologia,e tem sido utilizada para estimar distribuições populacionais, diversidade de espécies de animais e plantas.Neste trabalho, o principal objetivo foi verificar o efeito da fragmentação do habitat sobre o comportamento da relação espécie-área, a partir da colonização de uma área ou região sem nenhuma existência de vida. O modelo foi construído para descrever a ocupação de determinadas áreas por espécies.Estas áreas são representadas por redes bi-dimensionais que contém sítios. A cada sítio associa-se uma capacidade, que é caracterizada pela quantidade de recursos disponíveis às populações que colonizarão a área. A cada espécie foi atribuído um f itness, definido como a soma das capacidades dos sítios colonizados pela mesma espécie. No processo de colonização, mutações podem ocorrer, aumentando a diversidade de espécies.O modelo proposto foi estendido para simular, também, habitats fragmentados, e para esse caso foram consideradas redes contendo uma proporção de sítios não disponíveis para a colonização. Para a análise do comportamento dessa relação, considerou-se áreas amostradas em dois contextos: histórias evolucionárias diferentes e continentes. Observou-se que o procedimento adotado para amostragem da área altera a forma da curva espécie-área. Na análise do comportamento do sistema no contexto de histórias evolucionárias diferentes, observou-se que, com o aumento da proporção de sítios não colonizáveis p, houve um acréscimo no valor do expoente z para as diferentes regiões de escala em leis de potência para valores grandes de a, indicando um crescimento mais rápido da diversidade em relação ao caso onde as redes não são fragmentadas. Já no contexto de continentes, notou-se a existência de três regiões de escala em leis de potência para alguns valores de a. No entanto, à medida que a proporção de sítios não colonizáveis p foi acrescida, houve uma redução no número de leis para valores grandes de a. Verificou-se que o valor do expoente z é maior em áreas grandes. Analisando-se a distribuição de tamanhos das espécies, conclui-se que a fragmentação aumenta a freqüência de espécies com populações menores.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:21:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE JULIO COLA ROVIDA.pdf: 491833 bytes, checksum: 38ea9a7ec6fd58dba6680dfa971676e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-18 / The current rate of extinctions observed in the entire planet has its origin in high rates of habitat loss due to human population increase. The species-area relationship may be usefull in predicting extinction threats when combined with this loss. Lists of Cerrado s tetrapods were compiled and using the species-area relationship, we predicted values of species a threat. These values were compared with the IUCN Red List. The predictions of threat in all cases were higher than the Red List, except for endemic mammals that reflect the current threat list, and endemic birds whose predictions are lower than the threat level by IUCN. A large portion of species have populations in decline according to IUCN. Part of these results can be explained by a time-lag in the response time to the degradation itself associated with the gaps of knowledge about the species. The relationship could be used as a preliminary threat assessment, and followed by the aggregation of these red lists in order to increase efficiency in conservation planning. Life history, spatial and environmental heterogeneity data, when aggregated, should increase the prediction s accuracy. Major investments in basic biology are necessary in order to achieve maximum information input about the species to be evaluated. / A atual taxa de extinções observadas em todo planeta tem sua origem nas altas taxas de perda de habitat em decorrência do aumento populacional humano. A relação espécies-área pode ser útil na predição de ameaças de extinção quando associada a essa perda. Compilamos listas de tetrápodes do Cerrado e usando a relação espécie-área, foram preditos valores (números) de espécies em ameaça. Esses valores foram comparados com a lista vermelha da IUCN. As predições de ameaça em todos os casos foram superiores às da lista vermelha, excetuando-se mamíferos endêmicos que refletem as predições da lista atual, e aves endêmicas cuja predição de ameaça é inferior ao observado pela IUCN. Uma grande parcela de espécies também possui populações em declínio segundo a IUCN. Parte desses resultados seria explicada por um time-lag no tempo de resposta à degradação associada a lacunas de conhecimento acerca das espécies. A relação poderia ser usada como forma preliminar de avaliação de ameaça, e em segundo momento a agregação dessas listas vermelhas deveria ser feita a fim de se aumentar a eficiência no planejamento da conservação. Dados de história de vida, heterogeneidade ambiental e espacial, quando agregados, aumentariam a precisão da predição. Maiores investimentos em pesquisa básica se fazem necessários a fim de se obter o máximo de informações acerca das espécies a serem avaliadas.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-20T14:31:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_andrio_zafalon_silva.pdf: 3030038 bytes, checksum: a10638c2996d28623646b9fa7980b243 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-05 / The fragmentation of natural environments is a major concern among conservation ecologists nowadays, especially in areas with a great diversity of habitats as the coastal plains of Rio Grande do Sul. In order to provide the basis to the managers responsible for the maintenance of natural areas, as well as to develop the knowledge of the Muscidae family in the southern Brazil, this study aimed to determine the biodiversity of the Muscidae family, in addition to proposing a method to evaluate the pattern of the species-area relationship (SAR) without using a different sampling effort between the areas of different sizes. To do that, 140 Malaise traps were installed distributed in 35 areas of five regions in the Coastal Plains. Each region was composed of seven areas with four traps at proportional distances. A total of 6102 individuals were collected distributed among 120 species/morphspecies in the five regions. Based on the lists it can be stated the degree of conservation and the anthropic influence on the studied areas, mainly by the presence of the species of Muscinae and Coenosiinae. The similarity between the communities of Muscidae was determined by the proximity of the collection places or by the climatic conditions of the period, and it was also observed a positive relationship in the species-area relationship for the linear and logistic models. Although the model with the power function is not significant, it showed coefficients that allow the interpretation of the types of fragments that occur in the coastal plains of RS. / A fragmentação das áreas naturais é uma das maiores preocupações entre os ecólogos da conservação na atualidade, principalmente em áreas com uma grande diversidade de habitats como a Planície Costeira do Rio Grande do Sul. A fim de prover embasamento aos gestores responsáveis pela manutenção das áreas naturais e desenvolver o conhecimento sobre a família Muscidae no sul do Brasil, o presente estudo objetivou conhecer a biodiversidade da família Muscidae, além de propor um método para a avaliação do padrão de relacionamento espécie área (SAR) sem utilizar esforço amostral distinto entre as áreas de diferentes tamanhos. Para isso, foram instaladas 140 armadilhas Malaise distribuídas em 35 áreas de cinco regiões na Planície Costeira. Cada região foi composta por sete áreas com quatro armadilhas com distâncias proporcionais. Foram coletados 6102 indivíduos distribuídos entre 120 espécies/morfoespécies nas cinco regiões. A partir das listas podemos constatar o grau de conservação e a influência da ação antrópica nas áreas naturais amostradas, principalmente pela presença de espécies de Muscinae e Coenosiinae. A similaridade entre as comunidades de Muscidae foi determinada pela proximidade entre os locais de coletas ou pelas condições climáticas do período, e observamos ainda uma relação positiva no relacionamento espécie-área para os modelos linear e logístico. Apesar do modelo com a função de poder não ser significativo, apresentou coeficientes que possibilitam a interpretação dos tipos de fragmentos que existem na planície costeira do RS.