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Highlighting the effects of land-use change on a threatened amphibian in a human-dominated landscape

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Population Ecology

Abstract

In Western Europe, habitat loss and landscape fragmentation has led to significant population decline in various animal groups, including amphibians. The extinction of the last natural populations of the yellow-bellied toad in Belgium, Luxembourg and several regions of southern and western France suggests a widespread decline. By using site-occupancy models and adding covariates corresponding to the human-influenced features of the landscape, we tried to identify the relative effects of different land-use types on the species’ distribution pattern in a man-made environment (the Alsatian Rhine floodplain in France). We recorded presence–absence data in 150 forest sample plots (300 × 300 m) and then modeled species distribution while taking into account detection errors in the field. Land-use was recorded on two spatial scales: within the forest sample plots and in a 1500 m radius buffer area around the forest plots. In the forest plots, toad occurrence was negatively correlated with loss of forest cover to agricultural land. In contrast, occurrence is positively correlated with the density of human-made rutted dirt paths and tracks, which provide semi-natural breeding sites. In the 1500 m radius buffer zones around forest plots, toad occurrence was negatively correlated with the density of urbanization and road networks. These results can be used to plan conservation strategies for amphibians in human-dominated landscapes.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Aurélien Besnard for his advice with the design of the protocol, Gaël Fellet and Julien Prinet from the French Forest Agency for facilitating the field work, Victoria Michel for helping us collecting data and for her help with the GIS software, Wendy Hahn and Stéphanie Kaempf for helping us with the GIS, and Anne Ganet, Fanny Gosselin, Adeline Haller, and Priscilla Illy for their help in the field.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Ecologie des Hydrosystèmes Naturels et Anthropisés, Université Lyon I, CNRS, UMR 5023, 69622, Villeurbanne, France

    Hugo Cayuela

  2. Laboratoire d’Ecologie et de Biogéographie des Vertébrés, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, UMR 5175, 34293, Montpellier, France

    Hugo Cayuela & Claude Miaud

  3. BUFO, Musée d’Histoire Naturelle et d’Ethnographie, 68000, Colmar, France

    Julie Lambrey & Jean-Pierre Vacher

  4. Université Paul Sabatier, UMR 5174, Laboratoire Évolution et Diversité Biologique, Bâtiment 4R1, 31062, Toulouse, France

    Jean-Pierre Vacher

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  1. Hugo Cayuela
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  2. Julie Lambrey
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  3. Jean-Pierre Vacher
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  4. Claude Miaud
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Correspondence to Hugo Cayuela.

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Cayuela, H., Lambrey, J., Vacher, JP. et al. Highlighting the effects of land-use change on a threatened amphibian in a human-dominated landscape. Popul Ecol 57, 433–443 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-015-0483-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-015-0483-4

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