Amphibian Metacommunity Responses to Agricultural Intensification in a Mediterranean Landscape

Luis Albero, Íñigo Martínez-Solano, Ana Arias, Miguel Lizana and Eloy Bécares
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Luis Albero: Área de Ecología, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Gestión Ambiental, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Callejón Campus Vegazana s/n, Universidad de León (ULE), 24071 León, Spain
Íñigo Martínez-Solano: Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), c/ José Gutiérrez Abascal, 28006 Madrid, Spain
Ana Arias: Departamento de Biología Animal (Zoología), Universidad de Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Miguel Lizana: Departamento de Biología Animal (Zoología), Universidad de Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Eloy Bécares: Área de Ecología, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Gestión Ambiental, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Callejón Campus Vegazana s/n, Universidad de León (ULE), 24071 León, Spain

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: Agricultural intensification has been associated with biodiversity declines, habitat fragmentation and loss in a number of organisms. Given the prevalence of this process, there is a need for studies clarifying the effects of changes in agricultural practices on local biological communities; for instance, the transformation of traditional rainfed agriculture into intensively irrigated agriculture. We focused on pond-breeding amphibians as model organisms to assess the ecological effects of agricultural intensification because they are sensitive to changes in habitat quality at both local and landscape scales. We applied a metacommunity approach to characterize amphibian communities breeding in a network of ponds embedded in a terrestrial habitat matrix that was partly converted from rainfed crops to intensive irrigated agriculture in the 1990s. Specifically, we compared alpha and beta diversity, species occupancy and abundance, and metacommunity structure between irrigated and rainfed areas. We found strong differences in patterns of species occurrence, community structure and pairwise beta diversity between agricultural management groups, with a marked community structure in rainfed ponds associated with local features and the presence of some rare species that were nearly absent in the irrigated area, which was characterized by a random community structure. Natural vegetation cover at the landscape scale, significantly lower on the irrigated area, was an important predictor of species occurrences. Our results suggest that maintaining both local and landscape heterogeneity is key to preserving diverse amphibian communities in Mediterranean agricultural landscapes.

Keywords: agricultural management; amphibians; beta diversity; community ecology; metacommunities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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