Knowledge gaps hamper understanding the relationship between fragmentation and biodiversity loss: the case of Atlantic Forest fruit-feeding butterflies

PeerJ

article

Thadeu Sobral-Souza¹  Juliana Stropp²  Jessie Pereira Santos⁴  Victor Mateus Prasniewski⁵  Neucir Szinwelski⁶  Bruno Vilela⁸  André Victor Lucci Freitas⁴  Milton Cezar Ribeiro⁹  Joaquín Hortal² 

[1] Departamento de Botânica e Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso;Department of Biogeography and Global Change;Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Alagoas;Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidade Estadual de Campinas;Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação da Biodiversidade, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso;Laboratório de Orthropterologia, Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná;Universidade Federal da Integração Latino Americana;Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia;Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual de São Paulo;Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goiás

关键词: Biodiversity data;    Deforestation;    Butterflies;    Habitat fragmentation;    Atlantic Forest;    Landscape;    Macroecology;    Sampling bias;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.11673

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundA key challenge for conservation biology in the Neotropics is to understand how deforestation affects biodiversity at various levels of landscape fragmentation. Addressing this challenge requires expanding the coverage of known biodiversity data, which remain to date restricted to a few well-surveyed regions. Here, we assess the sampling coverage and biases in biodiversity data on fruit-feeding butterflies at the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, discussing their effect on our understanding of the relationship between forest fragmentation and biodiversity at a large-scale. We hypothesize that sampling effort is biased towards large and connected fragments, which occur jointly in space at the Atlantic forest.MethodsWe used a comprehensive dataset of Atlantic Forest fruit-feeding butterfly communities to test for sampling biases towards specific geographical areas, climate conditions and landscape configurations.ResultsWe found a pattern of geographical aggregation of sampling sites, independently of scale, and a strong sampling bias towards large and connected forest fragments, located near cities and roads. Sampling gaps are particularly acute in small and disconnected forest fragments and rare climate conditions. In contrast, currently available data can provide a fair picture of fruit-feeding butterfly communities in large and connected Atlantic Forest remnants.DiscussionBiased data hamper the inference of the functional relationship between deforestation and biodiversity at a large-scale, since they are geographically clustered and have sampling gaps in small and disconnected fragments. These data are useful to inform decision-makers regarding conservation efforts to curb biodiversity loss in the Atlantic Forest. Thus, we suggest to expand sampling effort to small and disconnected forest fragments, which would allow more accurate evaluations of the effects of landscape modification.

【 授权许可】

CC BY