Robustness of habitat‐based surrogates of animal diversity: a multitaxa comparison over time

Abstract

Summary1. Many animal taxa respond strongly to spatial and temporal variation in vegetation structure and floristic composition, suggesting that changes in vegetation could be a cheap and readily observable surrogate for changes in animal assemblages. Yet there is considerable uncertainty about how different taxa respond to vegetation over time, potentially limiting the application of habitat-based surrogates to many areas of applied ecology. 2. We examined the strength and temporal consistency of habitat-based surrogates of three different vertebrate taxa in a landscape with multiple vegetation types. We used regression models to quantify the relationships between six vegetation attributes (species richness and percentage cover of overstorey, midstorey and understorey) and three measures of bird, mammal and reptile assemblages (abundance, species richness and composition). 3. We found that overstorey richness and cover had both consistent and strong positive effects on bird assemblages. Vegetation effects were generally weaker and more variable for mammals and reptiles compared with birds. Each taxon displayed different temporal dynamics following fire, with negative effects on birds and mammals, but positive short-term effects on reptiles. Surprisingly, fire increased vegetation effects on birds, but did not consistently alter vegetation effects on mammals or reptiles, indicating a lack of concordant responses among taxa. 4. Synthesis and applications. Empirical testing of habitat-based surrogates of multiple animal taxa is needed to identify reliable and consistent management proxies. Our study suggests that habitat-based surrogates could be useful metrics for quantifying changes in bird assemblages through time and after fire, but that the same metrics could not be applied to mammal and reptile assemblages. The absence of both strong and consistent effects of vegetation attributes across the three groups of vertebrates suggests that taxon-specific habitat surrogates may be required to detect changes over time and after disturbance within heterogeneous landscapes.

Optimal taxonomic groups for biodiversity assessment: a meta‐analytic approach

“…Our key finding was that birds and vascular plants outperform a range of alternative taxa as surrogates for the richness and composition of unmeasured taxonomic groups. Although similar patterns have been hypothesized before (Butchart et al , Eglington et al , Barreto de Andrade et al , Barton et al ), our study is the first synthetic work to compare these assertions against alternative potential surrogates. Below we discuss the remainder of our results and their implications for improved biodiversity assessment.…”

Effects of time since fire on frog occurrence are altered by isolation, vegetation and fire frequency gradients

“…However, scientists’ capacity to predict the impacts of altered fire regimes on ecosystems is constrained by the variety of effects that fire can have on plant and animal populations. For example, different animal taxa often show variable—or even opposite—responses to time since fire (Barton et al., ; Driscoll & Henderson, ; Smith et al., ; Watson et al., ). Further, while time elapsed since the last fire in an environment is a strong predictor of species abundance in many instances (Haslem et al., ; Kelly et al., ), some species also respond to other aspects of the fire regime, such as the frequency of past fires (Lindenmayer et al., ; Lindenmayer, Blanchard, et al., ).…”

Text analysis tools for identification of emerging topics and research gaps in conservation science

“…For example, ‘temporal patterns’ was included in our description of research topics, a finding that reflects current trends in the surrogate ecology literature (Barton et al. ). Similarly, we identified fragmentation research as the fastest growing topic in our corpus (Fig.…”