Differences in species composition between sites (β diversity) may be the result of spatial species replacement (turnover) or nestedness (subgroups of species from a more diverse site). In fragmented landscapes, the environmental factors that lead to these differences may be spatially structured. Herein, our objective is to determine if the β diversity of Chrysomelidae (Coleoptera) is due to turnover or nestedness and whether the observed pattern is due to loss of forest cover or spatial processes in forest remnants immersed in a matrix dominated by intense agricultural practice. We used an incidence matrix of 99 species sampled from 16 forest remnants and found that the difference in species composition among the fragments is mostly determined by turnover and that this variation is not explained by forest cover or spatial variables. In regions where high habitat loss has generated landscapes containing small and islated forest fragments, structural features, related both to habitat (area, isolation, shape, etc.) and landscape (land use, landscape heterogeneity, etc.) could predict diversity patterns.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202020190745 | DOI Listing |
Retention forestry involves leaving single or groups of unharvested trees within harvest areas. Patch retention, which resembles structures such as unburned patches remaining after wildfire, is one practice implemented within the framework of Ecosystem-based Forest Management (EBM), which seeks to use natural forests as a model and minimize differences in natural and managed forests. Despite the widespread adoption of patch retention practices, few comparisons of the attributes of postfire and postharvest islands, or their drivers, have been made.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Total Environ
January 2025
Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.
Native vegetation degradation impacts soil communities and their functions. However, these impacts are often studied by comparing soil biotic attributes across qualitatively defined, discrete degradation levels within a single plant community at a specific location. Direct quantification of the relationships between vegetation and soil attributes across continuous degradation gradients and at larger scales is rare but holds greater potential to reveal robust patterns in aboveground-belowground linkages that may apply across different plant communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Total Environ
January 2025
Department of Forest Science, College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo (ESALQ), Av. Padua Dias, 11, Caixa Postal 9, 13418-900 Piracicaba, SP, Brazil.
Forest restoration has been a common practice to safeguard water quality and stream health but it is unclear to which extent and pace forest restoration recovers stream ecosystem structure and functions. Also, stream health might be affected by the forest restoration type and the quality of the interventions. Here, we sought to evaluate the recovery of stream habitat and water quality through forest restoration in catchments dominated by pasturelands, and explored the relationship between landscape structure and stream ecosystem recovery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Pollut
January 2025
Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas, Brazil.
The expansion of urban settlements over native environments may expose biodiversity to a host of emerging contaminants, with unintended ecological effects. This study evaluated patterns of contamination of streamwater by antidepressants in the Upper Tietê River Basin, a watershed of high social, economic and environmental relevance for comprising both the largest urban settlement in South America (the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo) and remnants of a globally important biodiversity hotspot (the Atlantic Rainforest). We sampled 53 third-order streams draining catchments regularly distributed across a gradient in urban cover.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcol Evol
January 2025
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia Manaus Brazil.
The growth of cities is one of the main direct and indirect factors responsible for the loss of native vegetation cover. Urbanization directly affects the biological communities inhabiting forest remnants inserted in cities, compromising the maintenance of urban and natural ecosystems. By understanding the effects of landscape transformation due to urbanization, we can have insights regarding the distribution of land uses that allow a proper maintenance of the urban ecosystems.
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