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Abstract
ABSTRACT We studied the species composition of frogs in two phytophysiognomies within Pampa biome (grassland and forest) of a Ramsar site in southern Brazil to assess the distribution of species and dissimilarities in community composition on a small spatial scale. We tested the hypothesis that the vegetation structure and the types of land cover present in each physiognomy influence species distribution and the compositional dissimilarity patterns between locations. We sampled individuals using pitfall traps and active search in the areas around the traps. We evaluated the existence of these differences by using permutational multivariate analysis of variance and multivariate dispersion. We found that the compositional dissimilarity was higher between the sampling sites from different phytophysiognomies than within the same phytophysiognomy. Also, the difference in anuran species composition between the sampling sites within the forest was considerably high. These differences were mainly due to the type of land cover present in each sampled site. Based on our results, we could assume that the phytophysiognomies evaluated here offer quite different colonization opportunities for anurans, especially those related to microhabitat characteristics, such as microclimate variables. Still, the presence of different types of land cover seems to be a decisive factor for the maintenance of some anuran species, since these can serve as an important source for obtaining food resources, in addition to facilitating the dispersion of individuals within and between locals, serve as sites for the regulation of physiological functions and also refuges against predators.
Highlights
The composition of species in communities is a result of a complex interaction between organisms and environmental characteristics
The number of recorded species varied during the sampling period, with the largest number of species recorded in May (12 species), September and November (11 species) in both phytophysiognomies
Anuran species registered by the three sampling methods in two phytophysiognomy types at Estação Ecológica do Taim, southern Brazil, between May 2011 and April 2012
Summary
The composition of species in communities is a result of a complex interaction between organisms and environmental characteristics. Both of them determine the possibility of a given species to colonize a habitat, as well theirlong-term maintenance in there (Schluter & Ricklefs, 1993; Ximenez et al, 2014) Abiotic factors, such as clime, the complexity of the vegetation structure, the type of soil, the primary productivity and the physical-chemical composition of the water determine the local characteristics of each community. The possibility of assessing the effect of habitat heterogeneity on the structuring of their communities comes up against the huge number of areas never sampled in the Neotropical region (Garcia & Vinciprova, 2003) This fact has implications for the establishment of conservation strategies for potentially threatened species - as is the case with many Brazilian anurans (Silvano & Segalla, 2005). Landscapes with unique characteristics are formed in each portion of the Brazilian coast, and this has a direct impact on the type of structure and composition of vegetation, forest formations and associated fauna (Marques et al, 2015)
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