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Heating a biodiversity hotspot: connectivity is more important than remaining habitat

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Abstract

Context

Connectivity, which is a fundamental aspect of any landscape, has been shown to have a nonlinear relationship with the amount of natural habitat, with a marked decrease at intermediate levels of coverage. Impacts on connectivity vary according to how natural habitat is removed. We analyzed connectivity in the Brazilian Cerrado (tropical savanna), a 2 million-km2 biodiversity hotspot.

Objectives

We evaluated the effects of habitat removal on connectivity, hypothesizing that a deforestation threshold exists below which connectivity is drastically reduced and that neighboring landscapes have similar patterns of connectivity.

Methods

We divided the Cerrado into 624 50 × 50 km cells and used the integral index of connectivity (IIC), available in Conefor software, to evaluate changes in connectivity between 2000 and 2017. We analyzed how the intra, flux, and connector components of connectivity vary with changes in percentage of remaining natural habitat.

Results

Between 2000 and 2017, 23.9% of the natural habitat of the Cerrado was lost (~ 254,000 km2) and connectivity decreased significantly (W = 179,700, p < 0.01). The most crucial change was the removal of connector fragments or corridors, which occurred in 78.2% of the landscapes. The relationship between IIC and remaining natural area revealed a breakpoint, when native area in a landscape reached 39% in 2000 and 37% in 2017.

Conclusions

Regardless of the spatial arrangement of habitat fragments, landscape connectivity is lost when the remaining natural habitat falls below a certain threshold. More restrictive regulations and government permissions should be considered to avoid over-occupation of landscapes.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financed in part by the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel—Brazil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001. We also thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development—CNPq for providing research grants to RBM (process #306838/2016-8) and LMSA (process # 309299/2016-0).

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  1. Graduate Program in Ecology, Institute of Biological Sciences, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, University of Brasilia, Brasília, DF, 70910-900, Brazil

    Thallita O. Grande

  2. Department of Zoology, Institute of Biological Sciences, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, University of Brasilia, Brasília, DF, 70910-900, Brazil

    Ludmilla M. S. Aguiar & Ricardo B. Machado

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  1. Thallita O. Grande
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  2. Ludmilla M. S. Aguiar
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Grande, T.O., Aguiar, L.M.S. & Machado, R.B. Heating a biodiversity hotspot: connectivity is more important than remaining habitat. Landscape Ecol 35, 639–657 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-00968-z

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