Abstract
The rapid expansion of oil palm cultivation in the Neotropics has generated great debate around possible biodiversity impacts. Colombia, for example, is the largest producer of oil palm in the Americas, but the effects of oil palm cultivation on native fauna are poorly understood. Here, we compared how richness, abundance and composition of terrestrial mammal species differ between oil palm plantations and riparian forest in the Colombian Llanos region. Further, we determined the relationships and influence of landscape and habitat level variables on those metrics. We found that species richness and composition differed significantly between riparian forest and oil palm, with site level richness inside oil palm plantations 47% lower, on average, than in riparian forest. Within plantations, mammalian species richness was strongly negatively correlated with cattle abundance, and positively correlated with the density of undergrowth vegetation. Forest structure characteristics appeared to have weak and similar effects on determining mammal species richness and composition along riparian forest strips. Composition at the landscape level was significantly influenced by cover type, percentage of remaining forest and the distance to the nearest town, whereas within oil palm sites, understory vegetation, cattle relative abundance, and canopy cover had significant effects on community composition. Species specific abundance responses varied between land cover types, with oil palm having positive effects on mesopredators, insectivores and grazers. Our findings suggest that increasing habitat complexity, avoiding cattle and retaining native riparian forest–regardless of its structure–inside oil palm-dominated landscapes would help support higher native mammal richness and abundance at both local and landscape scales.
Highlights
Habitat loss caused by agricultural expansion is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss [1][2]
All species detected inside plantations were detected in the forest, except for red-brocket deer (Mazama spp) and a small mouse, whereas seven species were detected only inside the forest; another 17 species recorded in both riparian forest and oil palm plantations (S1 Table)
At individual sites we detected an average of 47% fewer mammal species in plantations than in forests, whereas in some areas of Southeast Asia, fewer than 10% of total local native terrestrial mammals were found to occur in oil palm plantations [9]
Summary
This study aimed to understand the structure and responses of mammal assemblages to an oil palm dominated landscape in Colombia
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