Grassland fragmentation affects declining tallgrass prairie birds most where large amounts of grassland remain
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Grassland fragmentation affects declining tallgrass prairie birds most where large amounts of grassland remain Mark R. Herse
. Kimberly A. With
. W. Alice Boyle
Received: 27 March 2020 / Accepted: 20 June 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Context Habitat fragmentation can exacerbate the negative effects of habitat loss for some species. Mitigating fragmentation is difficult, however, because population responses depend on species-level traits (e.g., dispersal ability, edge sensitivity) and landscape context (e.g., habitat amount). Thus, conservation requires determining not only if, but also where and why, fragmentation matters. Objectives We aimed to determine if and where grassland fragmentation affects tallgrass prairie birds, which have declined precipitously due to land-use change. We surveyed four edge-sensitive species at 2250 sites (10,291 total surveys) across eastern Kansas, USA, over two breeding seasons. We assessed how the occurrence of each species varied with different levels of fragmentation in local landscapes comprising different grassland amounts.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01064-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. R. Herse K. A. With W. A. Boyle Division of Biology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
Results Fragmentation clearly mediated positive relationships between occurrence probability and grassland area for all four species. The direct effect of fragmentation was greater than that of grassland area for two species. Moreover, fragmentation reduced the occurrence of each species by at least half in some contexts. Fragmentation effects were most pronounced in landscapes comprising * 50–90% grassland, and less pronounced or absent in landscapes comprising \ 50% grassland, which were occupied relatively infrequently. Conclusions Conservation efforts should minimize ‘perforation’ of large grasslands by woody vegetation and land development, which not only replace grassland, but also often create disproportionately large amounts of grassland edge. Identifying mechanisms responsible for edge effects could further inform species-level conservation. Our results counter assertions that fragmentation does not matter or only matters when habitat is scarce or for species that are dispersal limited. Keywords Edge effects Flint Hills Fragmentation per se Grassland birds Landscape change Landscape pattern Rangeland management Spatial scale
M. R. Herse (&) School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]
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Landscape Ecol
Introduction Humans have ‘‘severely altered’’ more than threequarters of Earth’s terrestrial environments and now use more than one-third of land surface for crop or livestock production (IPBES 2019). Temperate grasslands and savannas have been particularly hard hit; g
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