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Impact of Habitat Loss and Fragmentation in Didelphid Marsupials of the Atlantic Forest

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American and Australasian Marsupials

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Abstract

There is a current debate about the effect of habitat configuration beyond the effect of habitat loss in fragmented landscapes. In addition, almost all information about how didelphid marsupials respond to landscape fragmentation is investigated in the context of “small mammal communities,” including small rodents. One hundred and thirty-two landscapes were analyzed, covering almost the entire extension of the Atlantic Forest in eastern South America to investigate how didelphids respond to habitat loss and if fragmentation per se exerts an additional effect on marsupial taxonomic and functional diversity. When the entire community is considered, habitat loss caused a negative effect while fragmentation per se did not affect total species richness. However, once forest-dependent species were distinguished from generalist ones, an effect of habitat configuration was detected in addition to the effect of habitat loss. Fragmentation per se significantly affects species richness in opposite directions, showing a negative effect in forest specialists and a positive effect in habitat generalists. Considering the four functional diversity metrics analyzed, only functional dispersion decreased with habitat loss, which means a decrease in species trait variability. The results showed the importance of defining species habitat dependence, since didelphid forest specialists and habitat generalists showed an opposite response to fragmentation per se.

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Acknowledgments

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Animal of Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) for the support and the Post-doctoral fellowship of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia Farroupilha – IFFAR – Campus Alegrete, Alegrete, Brazil

    Geruza L. Melo

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  1. Geruza L. Melo
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Correspondence to Geruza L. Melo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil

    Nilton C. Cáceres

  2. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia

    Christopher R. Dickman

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  1. Departamento de Ecologia e Evolução, CCNE, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil

    Nilton C. Cáceres Ph.D.

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Melo, G.L. (2022). Impact of Habitat Loss and Fragmentation in Didelphid Marsupials of the Atlantic Forest. In: Cáceres, N.C., Dickman, C.R. (eds) American and Australasian Marsupials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88800-8_27-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88800-8_27-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-88800-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-88800-8

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