División de Desarrollo Sustentable, Universidad Intercultural del Estado de México, San Felipe del Progreso, México, Mexico.
Instituto de Ecología Aplicada, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
PeerJ. 2024 Jul 26;12:e17818. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17818. eCollection 2024.
Linear infrastructures such as agricultural irrigation channels produce physical changes and negative impacts to habitats, wildlife populations, communities, and ecosystems. Open irrigation channels act as a pitfall for wildlife and can affect vertebrates of all sizes. Nonetheless, small channels have received relatively little attention by conservation biologists. The objective of this study was to analyze vertebrate species richness and mortality in relation to different sections of an irrigation channel system and the surrounding landscape characteristics. For two years, we conducted monthly surveys along an open-channel irrigation system to estimate its effect on vertebrates through records of dead and alive individuals. We examined the spatial relation of species richness and mortality with transects using a canonical correspondence analysis and chi-squared tests to determine possible variations in the different structures of the channel and seasonality. Further, a landscape diversity index was used to analyze the importance of surrounding habitat structure and composition on these parameters. Most vertebrates (61%) were found dead, small mammals and reptiles were the most affected. Our results indicate that mortality of small vertebrates varies depending on species, structures of the open-channel agricultural irrigation system (, concrete channel and floodgates), seasonality (, wet, and dry), and landscape heterogeneity (, high, medium, and low landscape diversity). The open-channel irrigation system is a threat to populations of small vertebrates in anthropized landscapes, conservation efforts should be directed at protecting water bodies and restructuring the open-channel agricultural irrigation system to avoid mortality of species such as small rodents () and reptiles (, , and spp.).
线性基础设施，如农业灌溉渠道，会对栖息地、野生动物种群、社区和生态系统造成物理变化和负面影响。开放式灌溉渠道对野生动物来说是一个陷阱，会影响到各种大小的脊椎动物。尽管如此，小型渠道却很少受到保护生物学家的关注。本研究的目的是分析与灌溉渠道系统的不同部分和周围景观特征有关的脊椎动物物种丰富度和死亡率。在两年的时间里，我们沿着开放式渠道灌溉系统进行了每月的调查，通过记录死体和活体个体来评估其对脊椎动物的影响。我们使用典范对应分析和卡方检验来检查物种丰富度和死亡率与样带的空间关系，以确定渠道不同结构和季节性可能存在的变化。此外，还使用了景观多样性指数来分析周围生境结构和组成对这些参数的重要性。我们发现，61%的脊椎动物已经死亡，小型哺乳动物和爬行动物受到的影响最大。我们的研究结果表明，小型脊椎动物的死亡率取决于物种、开放式农业灌溉系统的结构（混凝土渠道和水闸）、季节性（湿季和干季）和景观异质性（高、中、低景观多样性）。开放式渠道灌溉系统对人类活动景观中小型脊椎动物的种群构成威胁，保护工作应集中在保护水体和重新构建开放式农业灌溉系统，以避免小型啮齿动物（）和爬行动物（、、和 spp.）等物种的死亡。
