Abstract
Agroforestry systems are known to reduce impacts of traditional agriculture due to their capacity of decreasing deforestation and maintain biological diversity. This study investigated bat abundance, richness and diversity in an alley cropping system in Sao Paulo state, comparing bat assemblage to an adjacent forest fragment. Captures occurred in two distinct periods and the sampling effort of 1,296m 2 /h was applied for each site. From thirteen species captured in the fragment (n=109), in which C. perspicillata , A. lituratus and S. lilium were the most abundant, only two ( A. lituratus and S. lilium ) were recorded at the alley cropping (n=7). Shannon diversity was also significantly lower for the alley cropping (H’= 0.60), when compared to the forest fragment (H’= 2.02). Contrary to our expectations, the alley cropping system studied here does not support bat richness and diversity, as accomplished by other agroforestry complexes. The results also reinforce the importance of considering wildlife while managing agricultural landscapes and establishing agroforestry systems.
Highlights
The demand for agricultural products has driven tropical forests around the world to a drastically reduction of its original vegetation (Gibbs et al, 2010)
Agricultural expansion is one of the major causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, currently with only 12.4% remaining of its original area (SOS Mata Atlântica and INPE, 2018)
The remnants of Atlantic Forest in Brazil are located along the coastal region and in the interior side of the country as fragments isolated by agricultural fields (SOS Mata Atlântica and INPE, 2018)
Summary
The demand for agricultural products has driven tropical forests around the world to a drastically reduction of its original vegetation (Gibbs et al, 2010). Despite the known impacts of converting natural ecosystems into agricultural lands, losses of native vegetation are expected to increase on tropical forests of Africa and South America in the future (Laurance et al, 2014). In this scenario, agricultural expansion is one of the major causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, currently with only 12.4% remaining of its original area (SOS Mata Atlântica and INPE, 2018). Among the most discussed impacts of agriculture on natural ecosystems, forest fragmentation is a central issue because it affects biodiversity dynamics and restricts natural populations to increasingly smaller habitats (Chiarello, 2000). As these fragments are the only suitable habitat available for wildlife in agricultural matrices, their management plays an essential role on biodiversity conservation (Chiarello, 2000; Ripperger et al, 2015)
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