Abstract
Sugarcane and cattle pastures are two of the most widespread and economically important agricultural landscapes. However, in Brazil, they have not been properly investigated for their importance to native birds and wildlife conservation. Thus, we aim to characterize and compare bird assemblages of sugarcane and cattle pastures; and understand how landscape features within both habitats influence bird assemblages. We surveyed birds in both agricultural habitats over one year, and then investigated the relationship between species richness and composition with landscape diversity, matrix permeability, and the size and distribution of natural forests close to both habitats. We observed 132 species in cattle pastures and only 72 in sugarcane (48% bird community similarity). We further evaluated the richness and relative abundance of avian ecological groups, including habitat specialists and habitat generalists, insectivores, omnivores, granivores and frugivores. All avian groups were higher in pastures, the habitat where landscape heterogeneity and number of scattered trees was higher. Our results show that overall increasing landscape heterogeneity favors an assemblage with higher richness and composed by species with more diverse ecological functions. Therefore, we argue in favor of management practices that incorporate heterogeneity in agricultural landscapes, mainly in sugarcane fields where a homogeneous scheme has been used. Otherwise, the potential of agricultural landscapes for bird conservation will be highly hindered, particularly if the sugarcane sector expands to other agricultural lands.
Highlights
Croplands cover around 12% of the world’s terrestrial area (Gong et al 2013)
Species richness patterns in the bird assemblages studied were explained by the landscape features of the pasture and sugarcane plots
Our results confirm that heterogeneous agricultural landscapes promote the occurrence of a higher variety of species representing different ecological functions (e.g., Petit et al 1999; Benton et al 2003; Petit and Petit 2003; Bennett et al 2006; Fahrig et al 2011)
Summary
Each crop requires different management practices and natural resources, which influence the agricultural landscape characteristics (Fahrig et al 2011; Verdade et al 2016). Impacts on societies and economies are the main concern for policy-makers (e.g., Martinelli and Filoso 2008; Novo et al 2010; Egeskog et al 2011; Barretto et al 2013), land use affects the biodiversity of agricultural landscapes (Verdade et al 2014). Understanding which species use different crops and which species have the ability to disperse across crops (e.g., some forest species, Biz et al 2017) is useful for providing guidelines for designing agricultural landscapes that are biodiversity-friendly (Verdade et al 2014). Shade coffee in Central America (Petit et al 1999; Petit and Petit 2003; Tejeda-Cruz and Sutherland 2004; Leyequién et al 2010) and Ethiopia (Buechley et al 2015) are examples of important crops for biodiversity
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