Jayme A. Prevedello

Rio de Janeiro State University | UERJ · Departamento de Ecologia (DECOL)

Many factors have been proposed to affect biodiversity patterns across landscapes, including patch area, patch isolation, edge distances, and matrix quality, but existing models emphasize only one or two of these factors at a time. Here we introduce a synthetic but simple individual-based model that generates realistic patterns of species richness...

Edge effects strongly affect the abundance and distribution of organisms across landscapes, with wide-ranging implications in ecology and conservation biology. The extensive literature on the subject has traditionally considered that edge effects result from the active avoidance or preference of organisms for certain portions of the habitat patch,...

1. For animal species inhabiting heterogeneous landscapes, the tortuosity of the dispersal path is a key determinant of the success in locating habitat patches. Path tortuosity within and beyond perceptual range must differ, and may be differently affected by intrinsic attributes of individuals and extrinsic environmental factors. Understanding how...

Anecdotal observations suggest that some vertebrates follow plantation rows when crossing between habitat patches in fragmented landscapes, but the frequency of such behavior was never formally tested despite its potential implications for landscape management. We experimentally tested if the didelphid marsupials Didelphis aurita and Philander fren...

It has been increasingly recognized that the type of matrix surrounding habitat patches can affect biodiversity in landscapes, but there were only qualitative reviews of the subject focused on particular taxonomic groups. We present a quantitative review of studies from 1985 to 2008 that compared effects of different matrix types on individuals, po...

Almost all world's forest areas are predicted to be near edges by 2100, making the detection and prediction of biodiversity responses to edges an urgent need. Yet, idiosyncratic observations across studies have hampered general inferences on the main drivers of edge effects. We provide a global meta-analysis on 674 forest edge-interior comparisons...

Niche theory predicts that species abundance should increase with environmental suitability, but this relationship is highly variable across species. Understanding the causes of this variation is key to guide conservation actions, especially for threatened species. Here we test whether two potentially important but rarely considered factors, protec...

Understanding the effects of random versus niche‐based processes on biodiversity patterns is a central theme in ecology, and an important tool for predicting effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on biodiversity. We investigated the predictive power of random processes to explain species richness and species dissimilarity of amphibian assemblag...

The persistence of species in fragmented landscapes relies on landscape connectivity and individuals’ ability in dispersing among habitat patches. Accordingly, matrix structure can affect the orientation of dispersing individuals across the landscape. In this study, we measured the impact of matrix structure on the dispersal performance of the whit...

Although a few studies have addressed the combined effects of climate change and habitat loss on biodiversity at a regional scale, the extent to which climate change will impact species occurrence at the landscape scale remains unclear. We evaluated the potential effects of climate change at the landscape scale for 11 bird species endemic to the At...

Climate and land-use change are major drivers of biodiversity loss, but their combined effects are still unclear. Reforestation may compensate or reduce climate change impacts on species, but this hypothesis has not been tested yet. Here we quantify the additive and synergistic effects of forest change-in particular, reforestation-and climate chang...

Climate change and biological invasion are major threats to biodiversity, but their combined effects have rarely been quantified. The introduction of congeneric non-native species, in particular, can be especially problematic for native species due to competition and hybridization. Here, we quantify the impacts of climate change on the distribution...

Large isolated trees are keystone structures that can help maintain biodiversity in fragmented landscapes, with evidence that open areas with isolated trees may support similar levels of taxonomic diversity to nearby patches of habitat. However, it is not clear if isolated trees can support the same diversity of ecological functions as trees in hab...

Habitat fragmentation may affect animal movement patterns due to changes in intra- and interspecific interactions as well as in habitat quality and structure. Although the effects of habitat fragmentation on terrestrial movements are relatively well-known, it is unclear whether and how they affect aboveground locomotion of individuals. We compared...

ContextHabitat fragmentation per se (habitat subdivision independent of habitat loss) is a major driver of biodiversity change, potentially due to its impacts on climate. Habitat fragmentation may make landscapes hotter by increasing the amount of habitat edges, but can reduce landscape-level temperatures due to the “vegetation breeze” phenomenon....

Overexploitation is a main driver of biodiversity loss globally. Protected areas may have a key role in reducing overexploitation, yet their actual effectiveness in maintaining high-density and viable populations of overexploited species has rarely been evaluated. For overharvested plants, in particular, available information is extremely limited,...

The combination of species distribution models based on climatic variables, with spatially explicit analyses of habitat loss, may produce valuable assessments of current species distribution in highly disturbed ecosystems. Here, we estimated the potential geographic distribution of the threatened palm Euterpe edulis Mart. (Arecaceae), an ecological...

The Brazilian Squirrel Guerlinguetus brasiliensis ingrami (Rodentia, Sciuridae) is commonly observed in the wild, yet its population parameters are poorly known because this species is rarely captured with traditional live-traps. Here we evaluated the population parameters of G. b. ingrami in a 3-year capture-mark-recapture study at the Serra da Bo...

Changing forest cover is a key driver of local climate change worldwide, as it affects both albedo and evapotranspiration (ET). Deforestation and forestation are predicted to have opposing influences on surface albedo and ET rates, and thus impact local surface temperatures differently. Relationships between forest change, albedo, ET, and local tem...

Results for 2000–2010 climatic data. a Effects of decadal (2010–2000) forest change on decadal changes in annual land surface temperature (LST), evapotranspiration (ET) and albedo. b Comparative effects of deforestation (red) and forestation (blue) on LST changes across regions, considering only cells with ~50% of forest change. c Path diagrams sho...

Effects of forest change on daytime (a) and nighttime (b) temperature. Each cell in the plots represents decadal (2011–2001) changes in annual means of climatic variables calculated for 0.05 x 0.05° cells grouped into bins of 5° latitude and 10% forest change. Positive (negative) values indicate a warming (cooling) effect of forest change. (DOCX)

Summary of tests evaluating the effects of forest change on local climate. Models were fit separately for each climatic variable (a—e), for each region (tropical, temperate or boreal*), and for each category of forest change (deforestation or forestation**). All models included the type of cell (reference or focal) as a fixed effect, and the search...

Results for searching windows of 9 x 5 cells (longitude x latitude). a Effects of decadal (2010–2000) forest change on decadal (2011–2001) changes in annual land surface temperature (LST), evapotranspiration (ET) and albedo. b Comparative effects of deforestation (red) and forestation (blue) on LST changes across regions, considering only cells wit...

Standardized coefficient estimates for multi-level structural equation models. Coefficients are presented for each link of the path model (“Response”—“Predictor” pair). Models were fit separately for tropical, temperate and boreal regions. Three alternative spatial correlation structures were tested: rational quadratic (corRatio), exponential (corE...

Effects of forest change on albedo change considering the albedo GLASS (Global LAnd Surface Satellites) dataset. Each cell in the plots represents decadal (2011–2001) changes in annual means of albedo calculated for 0.05 x 0.05° cells grouped into bins of 5° latitude and 10% forest change. For this analysis, we first calculated monthly averages, an...

Histograms of standardized change values used in the analyses. Four variables are shown: forest cover (first column), annual land surface temperature (LST, second column), evapotranspiration (ET, third column) and albedo (fourth column). Values for each variable were recorded for each pair of focal/reference cells, as the one-decade change observed...

Results for a different classification of focal and reference cells. For this analysis, we classified “focal” cell as cells with absolute forest cover change > 10%, and “reference” cells as cells with absolute forest cover change < 2% a Effects of decadal (2010–2000) forest change on decadal (2011–2001) changes in annual land surface temperature (L...

Spatial distribution of all valid pairs of focal/reference cells used in the analyses. Each pair is represented as a single red point. A) Pairs used in the analyses of annual land surface temperature (LST; N = 36,493). B) Pairs used in the analyses of evapotranspiration (ET; N = 97,618). C) Pairs used in the analyses of albedo (N = 14,869). D) Pair...

Histograms of daytime (left) and nighttime (right) land surface temperature (LST) change values. Values were recorded for each pair of focal/reference cells, as the one-decade (2010–2000) change observed in the focal cell minus the one-decade change in the reference cell. Values are shown separately for each region (Tropical, Temperate and Boreal)...

Histograms of standardized forest change values for deforestation (A) and forestation (B). These values were used in the analyses comparing effects of deforestation and forestation on annual land surface temperature change (see Fig 4 in the main text). (DOCX)

Context The metacommunity concept helps to understand how local and regional processes regulate species distributions in landscapes. Metacommunity structure is often assumed as static, but may be rather dynamic, following temporal changes along environmental gradients. Objectives We present an empirical test of the temporal dynamics of metacommuni...

One of the major challenges in animal ecology is to understand the factors and processes driving movement behaviour. Although density may influence movement patterns, the occurrence and nature of density‐dependence in animal movements are still unclear, particularly whether it may vary among populations of a species, or across time within a populat...

Habitat loss and fragmentation are likely to affect individual condition as they usually alter the quality of habitat. However, responses of individuals of different species to these processes may be subtle and difficult to detect, despite that such responses may reveal interesting and diverse strategies of persistence of species in fragmented land...

Here we compile a data set comprising morphological and life history information of 279 mammal species from 39,850 individuals of 388 populations ranging from 5.83 to 29.75 decimal degrees of latitude and 34.82 to 56.73 decimal degrees of lon- gitude in the Atlantic forest of South America. We present trait information from 16,840 individ- uals of...

Measures of traits are the basis of functional biological diversity. Numerous works consider mean species-level measures of traits while ignoring individual variance within species. However, there is a large amount of variation within species and it is increasingly apparent that it is important to consider trait variation not only between species,...

Evaluating the impacts of large infra-structure projects on biodiversity is challenging, especially for linear projects such as power lines, which may extend over large geographical areas. Here we show how landscape metrics can be easily incorporated into Environmental Impact Assessment to identify the best alternative location for implementing lin...

Scattered trees are thought to be keystone structures for biodiversity in landscapes world‐wide. However, such trees have been largely neglected by researchers and their importance for biodiversity remains unclear. We completed a global meta‐analysis to quantify relationships between scattered trees and the species richness, abundance and compositi...

Despite the growing concern and literature on biological invasions, few studies have adopted an explicit landscape perspective to understand occurrence patterns of invasive species. We investigated how landscape composition influences the occurrence of a widespread invasive bird species, the Monk Parakeet Myiopsitta monachus, across landscapes of t...

Food availability is considered to be a primary factor affecting animal populations, yet few experimental tests have been performed to evaluate its actual importance in species-rich ecosystems such as rainforests. It has been suggested that in such systems certain plant species may act as “keystone” resources for animals, but the importance of pres...

Context Landscape ecology has traditionally been taught through theoretical classes or computer labs. On the other hand, field labs have been generally less used as a way of teaching landscape ecology concepts. Objectives We show that field labs with an inquiry-based approach, where students are involved in the investigation, are feasible for train...

Context Native vegetation is often used as a proxy for habitat to estimate habitat availability in landscapes. This approach may lead to incorrect estimates of the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation on species, which have not been thoroughly quantified so far. Objectives We quantified to what extent the loss of native vegetation reflect actu...

Edge effects are pervasive in landscapes yet their causal mechanisms are still poorly understood. Traditionally, edge effects have been attributed to differences in habitat quality along the edge–interior gradient of habitat patches, under the assumption that no edge effects would occur if habitat quality was uniform. This assumption was questioned...

Croplands have expanded dramatically during the last century, frequently leading to severe biodiversity losses within occupied areas. In addition to such direct influences, croplands may also have affected biodiversity within adjacent natural habitats, yet such potential indirect effects have rarely been quantified. Here, we test for effects of cor...

Effects of density dependence on animal movements have received much attention in ecology, but it is still debated to what extent dispersal and movements in general are density dependent, and their potential contribution to population regulation processes. Here, we determine the occurrence and nature of density dependence in the movements of a Neot...

Habitat availability—or how much habitat species can reach at the landscape scale—depends primarily on the percentage of native cover. However, attributes of landscape configuration such as the number, size and isolation of habitat patches may have complementary effects on habitat availability, with implications for the management of landscapes. He...

On November 8th, 2012, the Brazilian Ministry of Environment (MMA), through The Chico Mendes Insti- tute of Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio/MMA), issued the Circular Letter no. 01/2012/COINF/CGPEQ /DIBIO, regarding toe clipping as a method of individual iden- tification for studying small mammals, and requested expert opinion on the subject. We p...

The relative importance of food supply and predation as determinants of animal population density is a topic of enduring debate among ecologists. To address it, many studies have tested the potential effects of food on population density by experimentally supplementing natural populations, with much focus on terrestrial vertebrates, especially smal...

Edge effects strongly affect the abundance and distribution of organisms across landscapes, with wide-ranging impli-cations in ecology and conservation biology. The extensive literature on the subject has traditionally considered that edge effects result from the active avoidance or preference of organisms for certain portions of the habitat patch,...

Perceptual range is one of the main determinants of dispersal success in fragmented landscapes, which are composed of scattered remnants of original habitat in a matrix of variable composition. How perceptual range varies according to land use is essential information to estimate the functional connectivity of landscapes. We determined for the firs...

Habitat selection by small mammals is usually evaluated using data from live trapping, which provides little information about the movements of individuals. Few studies used movement data or compared the results of different sampling methods to study habitat selection by these animals. We evaluated habitat selection by the rodent Nectomys squamipes...

Despite most neotropical marsupials have arboreal habits, methodological and analytical difficulties usually hamper the study of vertical movements of individuals. We used the spool-and-line technique to record height and incline of movements, escape behaviour and use of refuges by the opossum Micoureus paraguayanus (Tate, 1931) (Didelphimorphia, D...

We report the first record of homing behavior of a Neotropical marsupial, the opossum Philander frenatus. The individual studied returned to the home forest fragment where it was captured (1050 m away) crossing a hostile matrix, instead moving to a much closer fragment (50 m distant). Movements did not follow wind or the direction of the closest fr...

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Utilization of space refers to the intensity of exploitation of a habitat by a species, including the amount and quality of the exploited habitat. It is an important factor driving the abundance and distribution of animal species. Brazilian small mammals have been used as models to evaluate s...

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Utilization of space refers to the intensity of exploitation of a habitat by a species, including the amount and quality of the exploited habitat. It is an important factor driving the abundance and distribution of animal species. Brazilian small mammals have been used as models to evaluate s...

RESUMO – O estudo avaliou o uso dos estratos da floresta pelas espécies de pequenos mamíferos através de três métodos de amostragem: armadilhas de captura viva, ninhos artificiais e carretel de rastreamento. Nas armadilhas e com esforço total de 69.525 armadilhas-noites (17.550 no dossel), houve 2.759 capturas de 1.172 indivíduos de 15 espécies, se...

The aims of the present study were: (1) to summarize the data available on the species of Streblidae and Nycteribiidae occurring on Paraná State; (2) to analyze the parasite distribution in the three major biomes of the state; (3) to evaluate in which degree host and parasite distributions are associated and (4) to indicate which areas in the state...