Forest cover is more important than habitat integrity or landscape configuration in determining habitat use by mammals in a human-modified landscape in Colombia

Abstract

Human activities shape the structure of landscapes in different ways and hence modify animal communities depending on the type and intensity of these activities. Here, we used a multispecies occupancy model (MSOM) to understand mammalian habitat use patterns across a mosaic of tropical dry forest in Colombia and elucidate whether forest cover is more important than its integrity and other landscape configuration metrics. Surprisingly, our data suggest that none of the factors (including forest integrity) had a substantial effect on the mean community habitat use or species richness of mammals across the Montes de Maria, and there was no strong evidence to suggest any particular pattern in the distribution of functional groups in the landscapes. However, the percentage of forest cover was substantially important for herbivores, and consistently showed a moderate effect on the entire community, carnivores guild some individual species. There was high variability in the responses of each species to the examined variables that hinder us from broad generalizations, but in general, we also detected a moderate positive effect of forest cover in both diet specialists and generalists and species with small home ranges. Omnivores, on the other hand, tended to occupy more heterogeneous sites (moderate positive effects). The lack of substantial effects on most species and the absence of threatened species across this anthropogenic landscape suggests that the current community is composed of species tolerant to habitat modifications, but not only diet generalist species. This is most likely due to a long filtering process caused by land use transformation. However, our results highlight the relevance of conserving forest patches regardless of their level of modification or any other landscape attributes for maintaining assemblages of mammals.