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Partitioning the effects of habitat fragmentation on rodent species richness in an urban landscape

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Abstract

Habitat fragmentation plays a major role in species extinction around the globe. Previous research has determined that species richness in fragments is affected by a number of characteristics. These include fragment age, size, and isolation, edge effects, vegetation coverage, habitat heterogeneity, and matrix content. Although most studies focused on one or a few of these characteristics, multiple characteristics work together to affect species richness, showing that the effects of habitat fragmentation are complex. The goal of our study was to partition the complex effects of habitat fragmentation by determining the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of multiple habitat fragment characteristics on rodent species richness. In 2013, we determined rodent species richness in 25 habitat fragments within Thousand Oaks, California. In addition, we measured the following characteristics for each fragment: fragment age, area, isolation, shrub coverage, habitat heterogeneity, perimeter/area ratio, and percent non-urban buffer. Path Analysis was used to test the hypothesized model which described the direct, indirect, and cumulative effect of each habitat fragment characteristic on rodent species richness. Overall, the path model explained 67 % of the variation in rodent species richness among habitat fragments. Habitat heterogeneity had the greatest direct and total effect on rodent species richness. Fragment size had the next greatest total effect on rodent species richness but this was nearly entirely indirect through its influence on habitat heterogeneity, suggesting that large fragments containing the greatest diversity of habitats will support the most species. Our study shows that large habitat fragments support the greatest habitat diversity, which provides the highest likelihood of conserving rodent species richness in an urban landscape.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank S. Riley and P. Schiffman for their expertise and assistance with this project. Sherman-live traps and GIS spatial data was provided by Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Parks Service. Field assistance was provided by S. Dunagan, P. VandenBussche and G. Luzwick. Funding was provided by the California State University Northridge Graduate Thesis Support Program, the Newhall Land & Farming Company Southern California Ecology Grant, and the July Gorchynski, M.D., Center for Cancer and Developmental Biology Graduating Masters Student Award. Housing was provided by the Malibu Creek State Park and the UCLA La Kretz Center.

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  1. Alex M. Johnson

    Present address: Department of General Studies, Trinity Bible College, 50 6th Ave. South, Ellendale, ND, 58436, USA

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  1. Department of Biology, California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA, 91330-8303, USA

    Alex M. Johnson & Tim J. Karels

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Correspondence to Tim J. Karels.

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Research involving animals

All trapping and handling of rodents followed the American Society of Mammalogists guidelines (Sikes and Gannon 2011) and was approved (Protocol 1415–001) by the institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) at California State University, Northridge.

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Johnson, A.M., Karels, T.J. Partitioning the effects of habitat fragmentation on rodent species richness in an urban landscape. Urban Ecosyst 19, 547–560 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0513-1

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