Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:21:34.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Environmental suitability of a highly fragmented and heterogeneous landscape for forest bird species in south-eastern Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2012

KATIA MARIA PASCHOALETTO MICCHI DE BARROS FERRAZ*
Affiliation:
University of São Paulo, Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, Forest Science Department, PO Box 9, Piracicaba, São Paulo 13418-900, Brazil
MARINEZ FERREIRA DE SIQUEIRA
Affiliation:
Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, 915 Pacheco Leão Street, Jardim Botânico, Rio de Janeiro 22460-030, Brazil
EDUARDO ROBERTO ALEXANDRINO
Affiliation:
University of São Paulo, Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, Forest Science Department, PO Box 9, Piracicaba, São Paulo 13418-900, Brazil
DANIELA TOMASIO APOLINARIO DA LUZ
Affiliation:
University of São Paulo, Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, Forest Science Department, PO Box 9, Piracicaba, São Paulo 13418-900, Brazil
HILTON THADEU ZARATE DO COUTO
Affiliation:
University of São Paulo, Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, Forest Science Department, PO Box 9, Piracicaba, São Paulo 13418-900, Brazil
*
*Correspondence: Dr Katia M. P. M. B. Ferraz Tel: +55 19 21058693 Fax: +55 19 21058601 e-mail: katia.ferraz@usp.br

Summary

Assessment of the suitability of anthropogenic landscapes for wildlife species is crucial for setting priorities for biodiversity conservation. This study aimed to analyse the environmental suitability of a highly fragmented region of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the world's 25 recognized biodiversity hotspots, for forest bird species. Eight forest bird species were selected for the analyses, based on point counts (n = 122) conducted in April–September 2006 and January–March 2009. Six additional variables (landscape diversity, distance from forest and streams, aspect, elevation and slope) were modelled in Maxent for (1) actual and (2) simulated land cover, based on the forest expansion required by existing Brazilian forest legislation. Models were evaluated by bootstrap or jackknife methods and their performance was assessed by AUC, omission error, binomial probability or p value. All predictive models were statistically significant, with high AUC values and low omission errors. A small proportion of the actual landscape (24.41 ± 6.31%) was suitable for forest bird species. The simulated landscapes lead to an increase of c.30% in total suitable areas. In average, models predicted a small increase (23.69 ± 6.95%) in the area of suitable native forest for bird species. Being close to forest increased the environmental suitability of landscapes for all bird species; landscape diversity was also a significant factor for some species. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that species distribution modelling (SDM) successfully predicted bird distribution across a heterogeneous landscape at fine spatial resolution, as all models were biologically relevant and statistically significant. The use of landscape variables as predictors contributed significantly to the results, particularly for species distributions over small extents and at fine scales. This is the first study to evaluate the environmental suitability of the remaining Brazilian Atlantic Forest for bird species in an agricultural landscape, and provides important additional data for regional environmental planning.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, R.P., Lew, D. & Peterson, A.T. (2003) Evaluating predictive models of species’ distributions: criteria for selecting optimal models. Ecological Modelling 162: 211232.Google Scholar
Antongiovanni, M. & Metzger, J.P. (2005) Influence of matrix habitats on the occurrence of insectivorous bird species in Amazonian forest fragments. Biological Conservation 122: 441451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antunes, A.Z. (2005) Alterações da comunidade de aves ao longo do tempo em um fragmento florestal no sudeste do Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia 13: 4761.Google Scholar
Bennett, A.F., Radford, J.Q. & Haslem, A. (2006) Properties of land mosaics: Implications for nature conservation in agricultural environments. Biological Conservation 133: 250264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boscolo, D. & Metzger, J.P. (2011) Isolation determines patterns of species presence in highly fragmented landscapes. Ecography 34: 112.Google Scholar
Cantor, S.B., Sun, C.C., Tortolero-Luna, G., Richards-Kortum, R. & Follen, M. (1999) A comparison of C/B ratios from studies using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Journal of Clinical. Epidemioloy 52: 885892.Google Scholar
Cerezo, A., Perelman, S. & Robbins, C.S. (2010) Landscape-level impact of tropical forest loss and fragmentation on bird occurrence in eastern Guatemala. Ecological Modelling 221: 512526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Código Florestal (2001) Código Florestal Brasileiro. Brasília, Brazil, Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Florestal, Ministério da Agricultura, Brasília, Brazil [www document]. URL http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L4771.htmGoogle Scholar
Chiarello, A.G. (1999) Effects of fragmentation of the Atlantic forest on mammal communities in south-eastern Brazil. Biological Conservation 89: 7182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, W. (1997) With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Debinski, D.M. (2006) Forest fragmentation and matrix effects: the matrix does matter. Journal of Biogeography 33: 17911792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devictor, V. & Jiguet, F. (2007) Community richness and stability in agricultural landscapes: the importance of surrounding habitats. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120: 179184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fahrig, L. (2003) Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 34: 487515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, K.M.P.M.B., Siqueira, M.F., Martin, P.S., Esteves, C.F. & Couto, H.T.Z. (2010) Assessment of Cerdocyon thous distribution in an agricultural mosaic, south-eastern Brazil. Mammalia 74: 275280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, A.H. &. Bell, J.F. (1997) A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models. Environmental Conservation 24: 3849.Google Scholar
Forman, R.T.T. (1995) Land Mosaics: the Ecology of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Forman, R.T.T. & Godron, M. (1986) Landscape Ecology. New York, NY, USA: Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Garcia, G.J., Antonello, S.L. & Magalhães, M.G.M. (2006) The environmental atlas of the Corumbatai Watershed-SP, Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Cartografia 58: 7379.Google Scholar
Gascon, C., Lovejoy, T.E., Bierregaard, R.O. Jr, Malcon, J.R., Stouffer, P.C., Vasconcelos, H.L., Laurance, W.F., Zimmerman, B., Tocher, M. & Borges, S. (1999) Matrix habitat and species richness in tropical forest remnants. Biological Conservation 91: 223229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giraudo, A.R., Matteucci, S.D., Alonso, J., Herrera, J. & Abramson, R. (2008) Comparing bird assemblages in large and small fragments of the Atlantic Forest hotspots. Biodiversity and Conservation 17: 12511265.Google Scholar
Goerck, J.M. (1997) Patterns of rarity in the birds of the Atlantic forest of Brazil. Conservation Biology 11: 112118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansbauer, M.M., Storch, I., Knauer, F., Pilz, S., Küchenhoff, H., Végvári, Z., Pimentel, R.G. & Metzger, J.P. (2010) Landscape perception by forest understory birds in the Atlantic Rainforest: black-and-white versus shades of grey. Landscape Ecology 25: 407417.Google Scholar
Haslem, A. & Bennett, A.F. (2008) Birds in agricultural mosaics: the influence of landscape pattern and countryside heterogeneity. Ecological Applications 18: 185196.Google Scholar
Kennedy, C.M., Marra, P.P., Fagan, W.F. & Néel, M.C. (2010) Landscape matrix and species traits mediate responses of Neotropical resident birds to forest fragmentation in Jamaica. Ecological Monographs 80: 651669.Google Scholar
Laurance, W.F., Lovejoy, T.E., Vasconcelos, H.L., Bruna, E.M., Didham, R.K., Stouffer, P.C., Gascon, C., Bierregaard, R.O., Laurance, S.G. & Sampaio, E. (2002) Ecosystem decay of Amazonian Forest fragments: a 22-year investigation. Conservation Biology 16: 605618.Google Scholar
Lees, A.C. & Peres, C.A. (2008) Conservation value of remnant riparian forest corridors of varying quality for Amazonian birds and mammals. Conservation Biology 22: 439449.Google Scholar
Liu, C., Berry, P.M., Dawson, T.P. & Pearson, R.G. (2005) Selecting thresholds of occurrence in the prediction of species distributions. Ecography 28: 385393.Google Scholar
Liu, C., White, M. & Newell, G. (2011) Measuring and comparing the accuracy of species distribution models with presence-absence data. Ecography 34: 232243.Google Scholar
Lynam, A.J. & Billick, I. (1999) Differential responses of small mammals to fragmentation in a Thailand tropical forest. Biological Conservation 91: 191200.Google Scholar
Manel, S., Williams, H.C. & Ormerod, S.J. (2001) Evaluating presence–absence models in ecology: the need to account for prevalence. Journal of Applied Ecology 38: 921931.Google Scholar
Martensen, A.C., Pimentel, R.G. & Metzger, J.P. (2008) Relative effects of fragment size and connectivity on bird community in the Atlantic Rain Forest: implications for conservation. Biological Conservation 141: 21842192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metzger, J.P. (2001) O que é ecologia de paisagens? Biota Neotropica 1: 19.Google Scholar
Metzger, J.P., Lewinsohn, T.M., Joly, C.A., Verdade, L.M., Martinelli, L.A. & Rodrigues, R.R. (2010) Brazilian law: full speed in reverse? Science 329: 276277.Google Scholar
Michalski, F., Norris, D. & Peres, C.A. (2010) No return from biodiversity loss. Science 329: 12821282.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mittermeier, R.A., Myers, N., Gil, P.R. & Mittermeier, C.G. (1999) Hotspots: Earth'S Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions. Mexico City, Mexico: CEMEX.Google Scholar
Moore, R.P., Robinson, W.D., Lovette, I.J. & Robinson, T.R. (2008) Experimental evidence for extreme dispersal limitation in tropical forest birds. Ecology Letters 11: 960968.Google Scholar
Mortelliti, A., Fagiani, S., Battisti, C., Capizzi, D. & Boitani, L. (2010) Independent effects of habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and structural connectivity on forest-dependent birds. Diversity and Distributions 16: 941951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, T.A. III, Stotz, D.F. & Fitzpatrick, J.W. (1996) Ecological and distributional databases. In: Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation, ed. Stotz, D.F., Fitzpatrick, J.W., Parker, T.A. III & Moskovits, D.K., pp. 111410. Chicago, IL, USA: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pearce, J. & Ferrier, S. (2000) Evaluating the predictive performance of habitat models developed using logistic regression. Ecological Modelling 133: 225245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, R.G. (2007) Species’ distribution modeling for conservation educators and practitioners synthesis. American Museum of Natural History [www document].URL http://biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org/files/SpeciesDistModelingSYN_1-16-08.pdfGoogle Scholar
Pearson, R.G., Raxworthy, C.J., Nakamura, M. & Peterson, A.T. (2007) Predicting species distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: a test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar. Journal of Biogeography 34: 102117.Google Scholar
Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P. & Schapire, R.E. (2006) Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions. Ecological Modelling 190: 231259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, S.J., Dudík, M. & Schapire, R.E. (2004) A maximum entropy approach to species distribution modeling. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 655662. New York, USA: ACM Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, S.J. & Dudík, M. (2008) Modeling of species distributions with Maxent: new extensions and a comprehensive evaluation. Ecography 31: 161175.Google Scholar
Phillips, S.J., Dudík, M., Elith, J., Graham, C.H., Lehmann, A., Leathwick, J. & Ferrier, S. (2009) Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data. Ecological Applications 19: 181197.Google Scholar
Prevedello, J.A. & Vieira, M.V. (2010) Does the type of matrix matter? A quantitative review of the evidence. Biodiversity and Conservation 19: 12051223.Google Scholar
Radford, J.Q., Bennett, A.F. & Cheers, G.J. (2005) Landscape-level thresholds of habitat cover for woodland-dependent birds. Biological Conservation 124: 317337.Google Scholar
Ralph, C.J., Sauer, J.R. & Droege, S. (1995) Managing and monitoring birds using point counts: standards and applications. In: Monitoring Landbirds with Point Counts (General Technical Report PSW-GTR-149), ed. Ralph, C.J., Droege, S. & Sauer, J.R., pp. 261268. Albany, USA: Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station.Google Scholar
Ribeiro, M.C., Metzger, J.P., Martensen, A.C., Ponzoni, F.J. & Hirota, M.M. (2009) The Brazilian Atlantic Forest: how much is left, and how is the remaining forest distributed? Implications for conservation. Biological Conservation 142: 11411153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodrigues, R.R. (1999) A vegetação de Piracicaba e municípios do entorno. Circular Técnica do IPEF 189: 117.Google Scholar
Sekercioglu, C. (2009) Tropical ecology: riparian corridors connect fragmented forest bird population. Current Biology 19: 211213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sick, H. (1997) Ornitologia Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Nova Fronteira.Google Scholar
Sigrist, T. (2006) Aves do Brasil: Uma visão artística. São Paulo, Brazil: Avis Brasilis.Google Scholar
Silveira, L.F. & Straube, F.C. (2008) Aves ameaçadas de extinção no Brasil. In: Livro vermelho da fauna brasileira ameaçada de extinção, Volume 2, ed. Machado, A.B.M., Drummond, G.M. & Paglia, A.P., pp.378679. Brasília, Brazil: Ministério do Meio Ambiente.Google Scholar
Smith, A.C., Fahrig, L. & Francis, C.M. (2011) Landscape size affects the relative importance of habitat amount, habitat fragmentation, and matrix quality on forest birds. Ecography 34: 103113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SOS Mata Atlântica & INPE (2008) Atlas dos remanescentes florestais da Mata Atlântica, período de 2000 a 2005 [www document]. URL http://www.sosmatatlantica.org.brGoogle Scholar
Stratford, J.A. & Stouffer, P.C. (1999) Local extinctions of terrestrial insectivorous birds in a fragmented landscape near Manaus, Brazil. Conservation Biology 113: 14161423.Google Scholar
Tabarelli, M., Aguiar, A.V., Ribeiro, M.C., Metzger, J.P. & Perez, C.A. (2010) Prospects for biodiversity conservation in the Atlantic Forest: lessons from aging human-modified landscapes. Biological Conservation 143: 23282340.Google Scholar
Tischendorf, L., Bender, D.J. & Fahrig, L. (2003) Evaluation of patch isolation metrics in mosaic landscapes for specialist vs. generalist dispersers. Landscape Ecology 18: 4150.Google Scholar
Turner, I.M. (1996) Species loss in fragments of tropical rain forest: a review of the evidence. The Journal of Applied Ecology 33: 200209.Google Scholar
Turner, M.G. & Gardner, R.H. (1991) Quantitative Methods in Landscape Ecology: The Analysis and Interpretation of Landscape Heterogeneity. New York, NY, USA: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Uezu, A., Metzger, J.P. & Vielliard, J.M.E. (2005) Effects of structural and functional connectivity and patch size on the abundance of seven Atlantic Forest bird species. Biological Conservation 123: 507519.Google Scholar
Uezu, A., Beyer, D.D. & Metzger, J.P. (2008) Can agroforest woodlots work as stepping stones for birds in the Atlantic Forest region? Biodiversity and Conservation 17: 116.Google Scholar
Umetsu, F. & Pardini, R. (2007) Small mammals in a mosaic of forest remnants and anthropogenic habitats: evaluating matrix quality in an Atlantic forest landscape. Landscape Ecology 22: 517530.Google Scholar
Umetsu, F., Metzger, J.P. & Pardini, R. (2008) Importance of estimating matrix quality for modeling species distribution in complex tropical landscape: a test with Atlantic Forest small mammals. Ecography 31: 359370.Google Scholar
Valente, R.O.A. & Vettorazzi, C.A. (2003) Mapeamento de uso e cobertura do solo da Bacia do Rio Corumbataí, SP. Circular Técnica do IPEF 196: 110.Google Scholar
Valente, R.O.A. & Vettorazzi, C.A. (2005) Comparação entre métodos de avaliação multicriterial, em ambiente SIG, para a conservação e a preservação florestal. Scientia Forestalis 69: 5161.Google Scholar
Vandermeer, J. & Carvajal, R. (2001) Metapopulation dynamics and the quality of the matrix. American Naturalist 158: 211220.Google Scholar
Veloz, S.D. (2009) Spatially autocorrelated sampling falsely inflates measures of accuracy for presence-only niche models. Journal of Biogeography 36: 22902299.Google Scholar
Willis, E.O. (1979) The composition of avian communities in remanescent woodlots in southern Brazil. Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 33: 125.Google Scholar
Willis, E.O. & Oniki, Y. (2002) Birds of Santa Tereza, Espirito Santo, Brazil: do humans add or subtract species? Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 42: 193264.Google Scholar
Willis, E.O. & Oniki, Y. (2003) Aves do Estado de São Paulo. Rio Claro, Brazil: Divisa.Google Scholar