Effects of land‐use change on community diversity and composition are highly variable among functional groups

Abstract

In order to understand how the effects of land‐use change vary among taxa and environmental contexts, we investigate how three types of land‐use change have influenced phylogenetic diversity (PD) and species composition of three functionally distinct communities: plants, small mammals, and large mammals. We found large mammal communities were by far the most heavily impacted by land‐use change, with areas of attempted large wildlife exclusion and intense livestock grazing, respectively, containing 164 and 165 million fewer years of evolutionary history than conserved areas (~40% declines). The effects of land‐use change on PD varied substantially across taxa, type of land‐use change, and, for most groups, also across abiotic conditions. This highlights the need for taxa‐specific or multi‐taxa evaluations, for managers interested in conserving specific groups or whole communities, respectively. It also suggests that efforts to conserve and restore PD may be most successful if they focus on areas of particular land‐use types and abiotic conditions. Importantly, we also describe the substantial species turnover and compositional changes that cannot be detected by alpha diversity metrics, emphasizing that neither PD nor other taxonomic diversity metrics are sufficient proxies for ecological integrity. Finally, our results provide further support for the emerging consensus that conserved landscapes are critical to support intact assemblages of some lineages such as large mammals, but that mosaics of disturbed land‐uses, including both agricultural and pastoral land, do provide important habitats for a diverse array of plants and small mammals.

Tree Community Composition and Dispersal Syndrome Vary with Human Disturbance in Sacred Church Forests in Ethiopia

“…Despite the largely negative impact of anthropogenic land-use change for many plants and large animals, a mosaic of forest with pastoral and agricultural land can provide habitat for small-mammals and a diverse array of plant species [45]. The ability of plant species to cross the matrix varies by species and the make-up of the matrix (e.g., agriculture, towns, roads), which indicates that distance alone cannot determine which species are most affected by fragmentation and that modification of the matrix can reduce the extinction risk of species in fragments [46].…”

Human-mediated impacts on biodiversity and the consequences for zoonotic disease spillover

“…Clearing intact ecosystems for agriculture, urbanization, and other land modifications (including development of forestry) drives the loss of large-and medium-bodied animals (that is, defaunation) while supporting the persistence or growth of populations of small-bodied animals [29][30][31][32] . Recent research has made it clear that loss of functional diversity (defined in Box 1) due to non-random patterns of defaunation has significant effects on zoonotic spillover risk 10,11,16,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] .…”

Low impact of forest conversion on biodiversity: evidence from small mammals in contrasting forests of Mt. Liangshan, China

“…(2) Although the structure and composition of vegetation in the plantation forests were simpler than those in the primary and secondary forests, some shrubs and understorey vegetation were also present in the plantation forests, which can provide food resources and shelter. Meanwhile, small mammals can quickly adapt to environmental change (Graham et al, 2019).…”

“…Therefore, different taxa may respond differently to forest conversion. Such an inconsistency may be caused by the higher adaptability of small mammals to forest conversion than birds (Graham et al, 2019). In addition, secondary forests with more plant species, including berry plant, can attract more bird species (Zhang et al, 2020).…”

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that primary forests play an indispensable role in the conservation of birds (Lindenmayer et al, 2015;Manuwal & Huff, 1987), plants (Kosulic et al, 2020), carabids (Elek et al, 2001;Magura et al, 2015), moths (Luque et al, 2007) and small mammals (Umetsu et al, 2007;Bogdziewicz et al, 2014;Rebelo et al, 2019) especially those that are forest-dependent or/and endemic. However, some studies have shown that the diversity of plants (Graham et al, 2019), small mammals (Suchomel et al 2012;Suchomel et al, 2014;Heer et al, 2015), and birds (Zhang et al, 2020) in secondary and plantation forests were equal to or even higher than that in primary forests, especially in heterogeneous landscape regions where secondary and plantation forests are distributed adjacent to primary forests (Bernard et al, 2009;Yang et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2020).…”