Recovering connectivity through restoration corridors in a fragmented landscape in the magdalena river’s valley in Colombia

Forest fragmentation is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss leading to the isolation of wildlife populations. This study focuses on understanding the role of restoration corridors as a strategy promoting resilience and viability of mammal and bird populations in a fragmented landscap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biodiversity and conservation 2024-09, Vol.33 (11), p.3171-3185
Main Authors: Montes-Rojas, Andrés, Delgado-Morales, Nicolás Alejandro José, Escucha, Rafael S., Siabatto, Laura C., Link, Andrés
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropogenic factors
Biodiversity
Biodiversity loss
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Bird populations
Birds
Cameras
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Community composition
Composition
Conservation Biology/Ecology
Corridors
Ecology
Forests
Fragments
Habitat fragmentation
Land cover
Life Sciences
Mammals
Multidimensional scaling
Original Research
Pasture
Population studies
Populations
Restoration
Riparian forests
Scaling
Species composition
Species diversity
Species richness
Vertebrates
Wildlife
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Summary:Forest fragmentation is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss leading to the isolation of wildlife populations. This study focuses on understanding the role of restoration corridors as a strategy promoting resilience and viability of mammal and bird populations in a fragmented landscape in Colombia. We installed 98 camera-trap stations − 8497 camera-trap days - in four different land cover categories: (1) forest fragments, (2) natural corridors, (3) stablished corridors and (4) pastures. We evaluated if restoration corridors do promote connectivity for large vertebrates and recover species richness and functional diversity lost in anthropogenically transformed pastures. We used indices of taxonomic and functional diversity and a non-metric multidimensional scaling to evaluate the influence of land cover over mammal and bird communities. Both, species richness and functional diversity have higher values in forests, followed by natural corridors and corridors and lower values in open pastures. Differences in species composition were greater between forests and pastures, and species composition of restoration corridors begins to resemble that of riparian forests and forest fragments. Our results provide initial evidence on the role of restoration corridors as an efficient strategy aimed to recover biodiversity and functional diversity in pervasively fragmented landscapes.
ISSN:0960-3115
1572-9710
DOI:10.1007/s10531-024-02907-9