Abstract
The vast majority of empirical studies on regional mammal defaunation across the Atlantic Forest biome of South America are concentrated in Southeastern and Northeastern regions. Thus, the lack of empirical information on the medium- to large-bodied mammal population declines across the subtropical region of this tropical biome and its major causes are paramount to conservation efforts. We investigate the influence of land use on mammal defaunation across the subtropical Atlantic Forest by sampling 91 points using 65 camera-traps installed for five consecutive years—totaling an effort of 30,189 camera-trap-days. We observed that the average defaunation across the Devonian Kniferidges Environmental Protection Area meta-region (spanning over subtropical Atlantic Forest plateaus) was 42% (D = 0.42; ± 0.17) when compared to presumed assemblages of historical times going back to the Pre-Columbian era (ca. 500 years ago). The main landscape predictors of regional defaunation were silviculture and agriculture, once the highest defaunation indexes were concentered in sites intensely human-modified by these features. Protected areas had significantly lower defaunation indexes in comparison with the unprotected areas. Although our results of defaunation were 29.2% lesser than the average for the entire biome, the negative consequences of regional defaunation on ecosystem services are already occurring, once two in each five local species presumably are locally extinct or present low abundances (i.e. functionally extinct). Given that habitat conversion is the primary cause of global biodiversity decline, our results reinforce that biodiversity conservation is still strongly dependent on natural protected areas networks.
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We thank the Postgraduate Program in Biological Sciences of the Universidade Estadual de Londrina and the Coordination for the Upgrading of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES-Funding Code 1689817), for logistical and financial support. JAB is supported by postdoctoral fellowships grants 2018-05970-1 and 2019-11901-5, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable contribution to this manuscript.
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Coordination for the Upgrading of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). JAB is supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) postdoctoral fellowship grants 2018-05970-1 and 2019-11901-5.
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ADP, JAB, and MLO conceived the ideas; SB and ADP conducted the data collection; ADP and JAB analyzed the data (defaunation index, taxonomic diversity, rarefaction, and generalized linear mixed model); ADP led the writing with assistance from JAB, SB, and MLO.
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Pereira, A.D., Bogoni, J.A., Bazilio, S. et al. Mammalian defaunation across the Devonian kniferidges and meridional plateaus of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Biodivers Conserv 30, 4005–4022 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02288-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02288-3