CIBIO-InBIO/UE, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos-Universidade de Évora (CIBIO/InBIO-UE), Dom Augusto Eduardo Nunes 7, CP, Évora (Portugal).
Departamento de Ecología Integrativa, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Avd. Americo Vespucio 26, CP, Seville (Spain).
PLoS One. 2018 Apr 11;13(4):e0194848. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194848. eCollection 2018.
Managing landscape connectivity is a widely recognized overarching strategy for conserving biodiversity in human-impacted landscapes. However, planning the conservation and management of landscape connectivity of multiple and ecologically distinct species is still challenging. Here we provide a spatially-explicit framework which identifies and prioritizes connectivity conservation and restoration actions for species with distinct habitat affinities. Specifically, our study system comprised three groups of common bird species, forest-specialists, farmland-specialists, and generalists, populating a highly heterogeneous agricultural countryside in the southwestern Iberian Peninsula. We first performed a comprehensive analysis of the environmental variables underlying the distributional patterns of each bird species to reveal generalities in their guild-specific responses to landscape structure. Then, we identified sites which could be considered pivotal in maintaining current levels of landscape connectivity for the three bird guilds simultaneously, as well as the number and location of sites that need to be restored to maximize connectivity levels. Interestingly, we found that a small number of sites defined the shortest connectivity paths for the three bird guilds simultaneously, and were therefore considered key for conservation. Moreover, an even smaller number of sites were identified as critical to expand the landscape connectivity at maximum for the regional bird assemblage as a whole. Our spatially-explicit framework can provide valuable decision-making support to conservation practitioners aiming to identify key connectivity and restoration sites, a particularly urgent task in rapidly changing landscapes such as agroecosystems.
管理景观连通性是保护受人类影响景观中生物多样性的一种广泛认可的总体策略。然而，规划多个具有不同生态特征物种的景观连通性的保护和管理仍然具有挑战性。在这里，我们提供了一个空间明确的框架，用于确定和优先考虑具有不同生境偏好的物种的连通性保护和恢复措施。具体来说，我们的研究系统包括三种常见鸟类群体，即森林专家、农田专家和一般专家，它们分布在伊比利亚半岛西南部高度异质的农业乡村。我们首先对每个鸟类物种的分布模式所依据的环境变量进行了全面分析，以揭示其 guild 特定响应景观结构的一般性规律。然后，我们确定了可以被认为同时维持三个鸟类 guild 当前景观连通性水平的关键地点，以及需要恢复以最大化连通性水平的地点数量和位置。有趣的是，我们发现，少数几个地点定义了三个鸟类 guild 同时的最短连通性路径，因此被认为是保护的关键。此外，还确定了数量更少的关键地点，以最大限度地扩大整个区域鸟类组合的景观连通性。我们的空间明确框架可以为保护实践人员提供有价值的决策支持，以确定关键的连通性和恢复地点，这在快速变化的景观（如农业生态系统）中是一项尤为紧迫的任务。
