Responses of Bats to Forest Fragmentation in the Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, Arkansas, USA

Diversity

Rex E. Medlin¹  Matthew B. Connior³  Karen F. Gaines² 

[1] Department of Biological Sciences, Arkansas State University, State University, AR 72467, USA;E-Mail:;Eastern Illinois University, Department of Biological Sciences, Charleston, IL 61920, USA;E-Mail:;Department of Biology, South Arkansas Community College, El Dorado, AR 71730, USA;E-Mail:

关键词: bat;    GIS;    conservation;    patch density;    landscape ecology;   

DOI  :  10.3390/d2101146

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Intense conversion of bottomland hardwood forests to rice and soybeans in the Mississippi River Valley of Arkansas has restricted the remaining forest to isolated fragments. Habitat fragmentation has proven to be detrimental to population sustainability of several species, and is the subject of intense study with often species and latitude specific responses. We compared both coarse land area classes and landscape fragmentation metrics from six 30 km × 30 km subsets centered on publicly owned management areas to bat captures obtained from a 2005 population study. Patch density was the strongest predictor of total captures (R² = 0.801, p = 0.016) and of Myotis austroriparius captures (R² = 0.856, p = 0.008). Our findings indicate that patch density and area are important predictors of bottomland bat captures.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2010 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.