Habitat Loss Reduces the Diversity of Frog Reproductive Modes in an Atlantic Forest Fragmented Landscape |
| |
| Authors: | Mauricio Almeida‐Gomes Carlos F D Rocha |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;2. Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| |
| Abstract: | Several amphibian species have ecological traits that can make them vulnerable to landscape changes, such as habitat preference and reproductive strategies. We evaluated how anuran species and their respective reproductive modes were distributed in an Atlantic Forest fragmented landscape, Southeastern Brazil. We sampled through visual encounter surveys three continuous forest sites, 12 forest fragments and five pasture areas (matrix) between July 2007 and March 2010. We recorded 50 anuran species with 15 reproductive modes, a third of them (33.3%) recorded only in continuous forest sites (modes 3, 8, 19, 25 and 36). These reproductive modes found only in continuous forest sites are typically forest‐associated, and seem to be more vulnerable to habitat loss. Additionally, we found a trend for larger fragments to harbor both higher number of types of reproductive sites and diversity of frog reproductive modes. Our findings suggests that fragment sizes can better predict the number of frog reproductive modes than the species richness in Atlantic Forest fragmented landscapes, and highlights the need to consider frog reproductive traits in future studies. |
| |
| Keywords: | amphibian declines fragment size habitat changes reproductive traits tropical forests |
|
|
