Countryside Biogeography Research Articles

Role of the countryside landscapes for sustaining biodiversity in karst areas at a semi centennial scale

Large-scale anthropic conversion of natural ecosystems into human-dominated countryside ecosystems has led to biodiversity loss worldwide. However, how countryside landscapes affect biodiversity is still controversial, especially in karst regions lack of relevant studies. To answer this question, we analyzed the impact of countryside landscapes on biodiversity changes in the South China Karst, featured as a World Natural Heritage site of subtropical karst landscape and rich biodiversity. We presented a new framework to examine the impact of countryside landscapes on biodiversity change at a semi centennial-scale using three indicators: biodiversity cluster characteristics, the barrier of villages to biodiversity, and the barrier of arable land to biodiversity. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images, satellite remote sensing data, and field survey data were combined during the process. Results revealed that plant biodiversity was positively correlated to vegetation restoration, and vegetation took approximately 80 years to recover to a stable state. Plant biodiversity spatial points are densely distributed at karst peaks, with an average distance of only 420 m–480 m. Small villages create no apparent barriers to biodiversity, with an average barrier distance of about 450 m–530 m. Arable land intersecting with forest patches connects biodiversity spatial points. Hence, the expansion of countryside landscapes in karst depressions was restricted by karst peaks, and patches of artificial arable land and forest connect the natural reserved forest at karst peaks, which both promote local spatial heterogeneity and sustain local biodiversity. This study enriches the application of countryside biogeography theory in karst regions and provides evidence for integrating biodiversity conservation into sustainable planning in broader areas. We strongly recommend that a heterogeneous landscape pattern similar to karst peak forests, such as the distance between biodiversity spatial points and the barrier distance to villages both around 450–500 m, would be conducive to biodiversity preservation.

Countryside biogeography: Conceptualizing where life lives in the Anthropocene

Countryside biogeography: Conceptualizing where life lives in the Anthropocene

Redundancy or progress? A response to Driscoll et al. (2019)

AbstractDriscoll et al. (Journal of Biogeography, 2019, 46, 2850–2859) provide a critique of ‘Countryside Biogeography’, but also include ‘Conservation Biogeography’ and ‘Agriculture Biogeography’ in their criticisms. Their main thesis is that these new sub‐disciplines offer a ‘conceptual wrapper’ rather than distinctive frameworks and that the consequent redundancy of terms has the potential to sow confusion among biogeographers and slow progress. Here we argue that, far from sowing confusion Conservation Biogeography, for example, has provided important focal points for emerging scientific discourse, promoting new research, spawning undergraduate and graduate courses, and facilitating the formation of new scientific collaborations. The success or failure of a new sub‐discipline depends on its utility. If new framings sow confusion, introduce redundancy and provide no new insights they will not be widely adopted and cited. The development of new sub‐disciplines is a strong indicator of a vibrant, socially relevant and intellectually adventurous research area.

A critique of 'countryside biogeography' as a guide to research in human‐dominated landscapes

AbstractProliferation of redundant terms in ecology and conservation slows progress and creates confusion. ‘Countryside biogeography’ has been promoted as a new framework for conservation in production landscapes, so may offer a replacement for other concepts used by landscape ecologists. We conducted a systematic review to assess whether the 'countryside biogeography' concept provides a distinctive framing for conservation in human‐dominated landscapes relative to existing concepts. We reviewed 147 papers referring to countryside biogeography and 81 papers that did not. These papers were divided into categories representing three levels of use of countryside biogeography concepts (strong, weak, cited only) and two categories that did not use countryside biogeography at all but used similar concepts including fragmentation and matrix. We revealed few distinctions among groups of papers. Countryside biogeography papers made more frequent use of the terms 'ecosystem services', 'intensification' and 'land sparing' compared with non‐countryside biogeography papers. Papers that did not refer to countryside biogeography sampled production areas (e.g. farms) less often, and this related to their focus on habitat specialist species for which patch‐matrix assumptions were reasonable. Countryside biogeography offers a conceptual wrapper rather than a distinctive framework for advancing research in human‐modified landscapes. This and similar wrappers such as ‘conservation biogeography’ and ‘agricultural biogeography’ risk creating confusion among new researchers, and can prevent clear communication about research. To improve communication, we recommend using the suite of well‐established terms already applied to conservation in human‐modified landscapes rather than through an interceding conceptual wrapper.

Countryside Biogeography: the Controls of Species Distributions in Human-Dominated Landscapes

Countryside biogeography seeks to explain the distribution of wildlife in human-dominated landscapes. We review the theoretical and empirical progress towards this goal, assessing what forces control the presence, abundance, and richness of species in anthropogenic and natural habitats, based on characteristics of the landscape and the species themselves. Recent modifications of species-area relationships that incorporate multiple habitat types have improved understanding of species diversity in countryside landscapes. Attempts to understand why species affiliate with human-modified habitats have been met with only partial success. Though traits frequently explain associations with human-modified habitats within studies, explanatory traits are only rarely shared between studies, regions, or taxa. Nonetheless, greater attention to the regional and climatological context of countryside landscapes has uncovered that (i) species that associate with human-modified habitats within landscapes tend to occur primarily in warm and/or dry biomes at regional scales and (ii) species that rely exclusively on human-modified habitats in cool or wet regions may be restricted to natural habitats in warm or dry regions. There remains a pressing need to determine how biodiversity can best be supported within landscapes to preserve nature and maximize ecosystem service benefits for humans. Future work in countryside biogeography must identify how land-use change interacts with other global stressors (e.g., climate change), determine how extinction debt and population sinks influence diversity, quantify the cascading effects of community changes on ecosystem services, and elucidate the evolutionary history and origins of species that today dwell in the countryside.

Habitat amount, not patch size and isolation, drives species richness of macro‐moth communities in countryside landscapes

AbstractAimOur aim was to test whether species richness patterns are best explained by the effect of the total amount of habitat within the landscape, or instead by a combination of patch size and patch isolation effects. To this end, we jointly contrast the habitat amount hypothesis and countryside biogeography with patch size and isolation concepts from island biogeography.LocationThree multi‐habitat landscapes in Peneda‐Gerês National Park, NW Portugal.TaxonMacro‐moths (Lepidoptera).MethodsLight‐trapping using a semi‐nested design at 84 fixed sites which were each repeatedly sampled six times.ResultsAutocovariate models show that sampling sites with a higher number of forest and meadow macro‐moth species (alpha diversity) were surrounded by a higher amount of forest and meadow habitat, respectively within a 160 and 320 m radius (scale of effect). These top‐ranked models, containing only habitat amount as a significant variable, had lower Akaike's information criteria (AIC) than models (only) containing patch size and/or isolation. Complementary to this, the countryside species–area relationship (SAR) model outperforms the classic SAR model, so that the effective area of habitat explains landscape species richness (gamma diversity) across spatial scales (beta diversity) better than the classic SAR. Specifically, we show that forest macro‐moths have a higher spatial turnover than meadow macro‐moths and that, on average, there are more species in forest than in meadow habitat.Main conclusionsThe habitat amount hypothesis predicts alpha species richness in multi‐habitat landscapes better than do patch size and isolation while the countryside SAR predicts beta and gamma diversity better than the classic SAR. We suggest that evidence is mounting to revise the application of the classical approaches of island biogeography and metapopulation theory to conservation biogeography.

Island vs. countryside biogeography: an examination of how Amazonian birds respond to forest clearing and fragmentation

Avian diversity in fragmented Amazonian landscapes depends on a balance between extinction and colonization in cleared and disturbed areas. Regenerating forest facilitates bird dispersal within degraded Amazonian landscapes and may tip the balance in favor of persistence in habitat patches. Determining the response of Amazonian birds to fragmentation may be hindered because many species use adjacent second growth matrices thereby limiting the applicability of island biogeography to predict species loss; alternatively, a countryside biogeographic framework to evaluate the value of regenerating forest may be more appropriate. Here, we used point‐count and capture data to compare Amazonian bird communities among continuous forest, 100 ha forest fragments with adjacent second growth, young and older second growth plots, and 100 ha forested islands bounded by water, to test the applicability of island biogeography on the mainland and to assess the ecological value of a regenerating matrix. Among foraging guilds, understory insectivores and flocking species were nearly absent on true islands. Fragments surrounded by young second growth were species rich, suggesting that a developing matrix may mitigate extinction associated with fragmentation. Our findings reinforce that true islands are often extinction‐driven systems with distinct, depauperate communities. In contrast, succession of bird communities in second growth facilitates recolonization of forest fragments, permitting fragments as small as 100 ha to support bird communities similar to continuous forest.

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth's history, have emerged as a global force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet. It is no longer possible to understand, predict, or successfully manage ecological pattern, process, or change without understanding why and how humans reshape these over the long term. Here, a general causal theory is presented to explain why human societies gained the capacity to globally alter the patterns, processes, and dynamics of ecology and how these anthropogenic alterations unfold over time and space as societies themselves change over human generational time. Building on existing theories of ecosystem engineering, niche construction, inclusive inheritance, cultural evolution, ultrasociality, and social change, this theory of anthroecological change holds that sociocultural evolution of subsistence regimes based on ecosystem engineering, social specialization, and non‐kin exchange, or “sociocultural niche construction,” is the main cause of both the long‐term upscaling of human societies and their unprecedented transformation of the biosphere. Human sociocultural niche construction can explain, where classic ecological theory cannot, the sustained transformative effects of human societies on biogeography, ecological succession, ecosystem processes, and the ecological patterns and processes of landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere. Anthroecology theory generates empirically testable hypotheses on the forms and trajectories of long‐term anthropogenic ecological change that have significant theoretical and practical implications across the subdisciplines of ecology and conservation. Though still at an early stage of development, anthroecology theory aligns with and integrates established theoretical frameworks including social–ecological systems, social metabolism, countryside biogeography, novel ecosystems, and anthromes. The “fluxes of nature” are fast becoming “cultures of nature.” To investigate, understand, and address the ultimate causes of anthropogenic ecological change, not just the consequences, human sociocultural processes must become as much a part of ecological theory and practice as biological and geophysical processes are now. Strategies for achieving this goal and for advancing ecological science and conservation in an increasingly anthropogenic biosphere are presented.

Conservation planning in agricultural landscapes: hotspots of conflict between agriculture and nature.

AimConservation conflict takes place where food production imposes a cost on wildlife conservation and vice versa. Where does conservation impose the maximum cost on production, by opposing the intensification and expansion of farmland? Where does conservation confer the maximum benefit on wildlife, by buffering and connecting protected areas with a habitable and permeable matrix of crop and non-crop habitat? Our aim was to map the costs and benefits of conservation versus production and thus to propose a conceptual framework for systematic conservation planning in agricultural landscapes.LocationWorld-wide.MethodsTo quantify these costs and benefits, we used a geographic information system to sample the cropland of the world and map the proportion of non-crop habitat surrounding the cropland, the number of threatened vertebrates with potential to live in or move through the matrix and the yield gap of the cropland. We defined the potential for different types of conservation conflict in terms of interactions between habitat and yield (potential for expansion, intensification, both or neither). We used spatial scan statistics to find ‘hotspots’ of conservation conflict.ResultsAll of the ‘hottest’ hotspots of conservation conflict were in sub-Saharan Africa, which could have impacts on sustainable intensification in this region.Main conclusionsSystematic conservation planning could and should be used to identify hotspots of conservation conflict in agricultural landscapes, at multiple scales. The debate between ‘land sharing’ (extensive agriculture that is wildlife friendly) and ‘land sparing’ (intensive agriculture that is less wildlife friendly but also less extensive) could be resolved if sharing and sparing were used as different types of tool for resolving different types of conservation conflict (buffering and connecting protected areas by maintaining matrix quality, in different types of matrix). Therefore, both sharing and sparing should be prioritized in hotspots of conflict, in the context of countryside biogeography.

Ecologies of Scale: Multifunctionality Connects Conservation and Agriculture across Fields, Farms, and Landscapes

Agroecology and landscape ecology are two land-use sciences based on ecological principles, but have historically focused on fine and broad spatial scales, respectively. As global demand for food strains current resources and threatens biodiversity conservation, concepts such as multifunctional landscapes and ecologically-analogous agroecosystems integrate ecological concepts across multiple spatial scales. This paper reviews ecological principles behind several concepts crucial to the reconciliation of food production and biodiversity conservation, including relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functions such as productivity and stability; insect pest and pollinator management; integrated crop and livestock systems; countryside biogeography and heterogeneity-based rangeland management. Ecological principles are integrated across three spatial scales: fields, farms, and landscapes.

Predicting biodiversity change and averting collapse in agricultural landscapes

The equilibrium theory of island biogeography is the basis for estimating extinction rates and a pillar of conservation science. The default strategy for conserving biodiversity is the designation of nature reserves, treated as islands in an inhospitable sea of human activity. Despite the profound influence of islands on conservation theory and practice, their mainland analogues, forest fragments in human-dominated landscapes, consistently defy expected biodiversity patterns based on island biogeography theory. Countryside biogeography is an alternative framework, which recognizes that the fate of the world's wildlife will be decided largely by the hospitality of agricultural or countryside ecosystems. Here we directly test these biogeographic theories by comparing a Neotropical countryside ecosystem with a nearby island ecosystem, and show that each supports similar bat biodiversity in fundamentally different ways. The island ecosystem conforms to island biogeographic predictions of bat species loss, in which the water matrix is not habitat. In contrast, the countryside ecosystem has high species richness and evenness across forest reserves and smaller forest fragments. Relative to forest reserves and fragments, deforested countryside habitat supports a less species-rich, yet equally even, bat assemblage. Moreover, the bat assemblage associated with deforested habitat is compositionally novel because of predictable changes in abundances by many species using human-made habitat. Finally, we perform a global meta-analysis of bat biogeographic studies, spanning more than 700 species. It generalizes our findings, showing that separate biogeographic theories for countryside and island ecosystems are necessary. A theory of countryside biogeography is essential to conservation strategy in the agricultural ecosystems that comprise roughly half of the global land surface and are likely to increase even further.

Countryside biogeography of Neotropical reptiles and amphibians.

The future of biodiversity and ecosystem services depends largely on the capacity of human-dominated ecosystems to support them, yet this capacity remains largely unknown. Using the framework of countryside biogeography, and working in the Las Cruces system of Coto Brus, Costa Rica, we assessed reptile and amphibian assemblages within four habitats that typify much of the Neotropics: sun coffee plantations (12 sites), pasture (12 sites), remnant forest elements (12 sites), and a larger, contiguous protected forest (3 sites in one forest). Through analysis of 1678 captures of 67 species, we draw four primary conclusions. First, we found that the majority of reptile (60%) and amphibian (70%) species in this study used an array of habitat types, including coffee plantations and actively grazed pastures. Second, we found that coffee plantations and pastures hosted rich, albeit different and less dense, reptile and amphibian biodiversity relative to the 326-ha Las Cruces Forest Reserve and neighboring forest elements. Third, we found that the small ribbons of "countryside forest elements" weaving through farmland collectively increased the effective size of a 326-ha local forest reserve 16-fold for reptiles and 14-fold for amphibians within our 236-km2 study area. Therefore, countryside forest elements, often too small for most remote sensing techniques to identify, are contributing -95% of the available habitat for forest-dependent reptiles and amphibians in our largely human-dominated study region. Fourth, we found large and pond-reproducing amphibians to prefer human-made habitats, whereas small, stream-reproducing, and directly developing species are more dependent on forest elements. Our investigation demonstrates that tropical farming landscapes can support substantial reptile and amphibian biodiversity. Our approach provides a framework for estimating the conservation value of the complex working landscapes that constitute roughly half of the global land surface, and which are experiencing intensification pressure worldwide.

DOÑONA: Una experiencia única en los humedales españoles

Describes the research experience of the authors that participated in the XVII Conference on Countryside Biogeography of Spain. This year, this event took place in one of the most important wetland reserves for biodiversity, geographical location and condition, the Donana nature reserve. Through the interaction of a multidisciplinary team, the major characteristics of two study sites where described, from the point of view of flora and fauna. The application of novel sampling techniques enabled learning and exchange of ideas between researchers and students from different countries. The participation of Mexicans in this event influenced the organizing committee to propose to the Mexican reserves Heaven as a study area for the next biogeography generation.

Land change in the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado), 1986–2002: Comparative analysis and implications for land-use policy

The Brazilian Cerrado, a biodiverse savanna ecoregion covering ∼1.8 million km 2 south and east of the Amazon rainforest, is in rapid decline because of the expansion of modern agriculture. Previous studies of Cerrado land-use and land-cover (LULC) change imply spatial homogeneity, report widely varying rates of land conversion, use ambiguous LULC categories, and generally do not attempt to validate results. This study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing moderate-resolution, multi-spectral satellite remote sensing data from 1986 to 2002 in two regions with identical underlying drivers. Unsupervised classification by the ISODATA algorithm indicates that Cerrado was converted to agro-pastoral land covers in 31% (3646 km 2) of the study region in western Bahia and 24% (3011 km 2) of the eastern Mato Grosso study region, while nearly 40% (4688 km 2 and 5217 km 2, respectively) of each study region remained unchanged. Although aggregate land change is similar, large and contiguous fragments persist in western Bahia, while smaller fragments remain in eastern Mato Grosso. These findings are considered in the current context of Cerrado land-use policy, which is dominated by the conservation set-aside and command-control policy models. The spatial characteristics of Cerrado remnants create considerable obstacles to implement the models; an alternative approach, informed by countryside biogeography, may encourage collaboration between state officials and farmer-landowners toward conservation land-use policies.

Urban Countryside Biogeography: a decade of comparing the avifauna of a Sydney suburb and reserve

As the human enterprise expands, the task of preserving biodiversity increasingly must be carried out in areas heavily modified by humanity ? the domain of countryside biogeography (Daily 2001; Daily et al. 2001). Countrysides normally are thought of as rural environments. The dividing line between rural and urban is often blurred by suburbs; urban environments represent the expanding end of a continuum of disturbance, the other end of which is the shrinking domain of relatively undisturbed natural areas and wilderness. Because of the growing preponderance of urbanization, ecologists over the past quarter century have increasingly turned their attention to conservation in urban areas.

Countryside Biogeography of Neotropical Mammals: Conservation Opportunities in Agricultural Landscapes of Costa Rica

Abstract: The future of mammalian diversity in the tropics depends largely on the conservation value of human‐dominated lands. We investigated the distribution of non‐flying mammals in five habitats of southern Costa Rica: relatively extensive forest (227 ha), coffee plantation, pasture, coffee with adjacent forest remnant (<35 ha), and pasture with adjacent forest remnant (<35 ha). Of the 26 native species recorded in our study plots, 9 (35%) were restricted to forest habitat, 14 (54%) occurred in both forest and agricultural habitats, and 3 (11%) were found only in agricultural habitats. Species richness and composition varied significantly with habitat type but not with distance from the extensive forest. Interestingly, small forest remnants (<35 ha) contiguous with coffee plantations did not differ from more extensive forest in species richness and were richer than other agricultural habitat types. Small remnants contiguous with pasture were species‐poor. When clearing started, the study region likely supported about 60 species. Since then, at least 6 species (10%), one family (4%), and one order (11%) have gone extinct locally. The species that disappeared were the largest in their families and included carnivorous (e.g., jaguar[Panthera onca]),herbivorous (e.g., Baird's tapir, [Tapirus bairdii]),and arboreal (e.g., mantled howler monkey[Alouatta palliata])species. Although there is no substitute for native forest habitat, the majority of native, nonflying mammal species use countryside habitats. The populations of many persist even >5 km from relatively extensive forest, at least over the 40 years since forest clearance. Moreover, if hunting ceased, we expect that at least one of the locally extinct species could be reestablished in the existing landscape. Thus, there is an important opportunity to maintain and restore the diversity, abundance, and ecosystem roles of mammals in at least some human‐dominated regions of the Neotropics.

Countryside Biogeography of Tropical Butterflies

Abstract: Although most conservation efforts focus on preserving biodiversity in relatively pristine ecosystems, we investigated possible conservation opportunities in human‐dominated landscapes. We evaluated butterfly diversity in a tropical countryside that was converted about four decades ago from continuous forest to a mosaic of coffee farms, pasture, and forest fragments. We compared the butterfly fauna in coffee plantations with that in a forest remnant, the Las Cruces Reserve (227 ha). We used coffee plantation sites located “near” (<2.5 km) and “far” (>6 km) from the large forest remnant to test the effects of distance from the remnant on butterfly diversity. We also tested the effects of immediately adjacent habitat by selecting coffee plantation sites that were either contiguous with “small” (2.5–9.5 ha) forest fragments (coffee/forest) or lacking adjacent forest (coffee). Both coffee/forest and coffee habitats near the Las Cruces Reserve differed from those far from the reserve in species composition but not in species richness. Overall, coffee/forest habitats had significantly higher mean species richness and higher mean abundance of species than coffee and reserve sites. Further, butterflies with narrow geographic ranges were less likely to be found in coffee plantations than were those with larger geographic ranges. Area of forest cover within a radius of 50 to 100 m of the sampling site was significantly correlated with species richness of frugivorous butterflies during the dry season but was not correlated with richness of frugivorous butterflies in the wet season or of nonfrugivorous butterflies in either season. Nonetheless, species richness of frugivorous and nonfrugivorous butterflies was positively correlated overall; thus, frugivorous butterflies may be good indicators of the status of the entire butterfly community in a region. Our work suggests that small, isolated forest fragments may help retain butterfly diversity in the tropical countryside and increase the conservation value of agricultural landscapes. Relatively large tracts of forest remain important, however, because they maintain rare and endemic species.

Countryside Biogeography of Moths in a Fragmented Landscape: Biodiversity in Native and Agricultural Habitats

Abstract: Studies of fragmented landscapes, especially in the tropics, have traditionally focused on the native fragments themselves, ignoring species distributions in surrounding agricultural or other human‐dominated areas. We sampled moth species richness within a 227‐ha forest fragment and in four surrounding agricultural habitats (coffee, shade coffee, pasture, and mixed farms) in southern Costa Rica. We found no significant difference in moth species richness or abundance among agricultural habitats, but agricultural sites within 1 km of the forest fragment had significantly higher richness and abundance than sites farther than 3.5 km from the fragment. In addition, species composition differed significantly between distance classes ( but not among agricultural habitats), with near sites more similar to forest than far sites. These results suggest that (1) different agricultural production regimes in this region may offer similar habitat elements and thus may not differ substantially in their capacities to support native moth populations and (2) that the majority of moths may utilize both native and agricultural habitats and move frequently between them, forming “halos” of relatively high species richness and abundance around forest fragments. Correlations between species richness and the amount of nearby forest cover, measured over circles of various radii around the sites, suggest that halos extend approximately 1.0–1.4 km from the forest edge. The extent of these halos likely differs among taxa and may influence their ability to survive in fragmented landscapes.

Countryside Biogeography: Use of Human-Dominated Habitats by the Avifauna of Southern Costa Rica

Countryside Biogeography: Use of Human-Dominated Habitats by the Avifauna of Southern Costa Rica

On the Origin of the Field Plants of the Northeastern United States

Old fields have dominated studies of terrestrial plant succession in the eastern United States. In spite of the tremendous amount of work on old field succession, fundamental questions remain. One such question is the subject of the present paper: In the primeval landscape, where were the plants that are abundant today in old fields? The question holds interest not only for interpretation of the northeastern landscape but also for understanding of the habitats in which field plants evolved. The plants of fallow agricultural fields are widely assumed to be early successional species, i.e., plants adapted to move from one temporary opening to another, but did they really evolve as successional plants? Many of the plants that grow in abandoned fields today are not native to North America and were thus not part of the landscape prior to European settlement. Bard (1952) reported that between one fifth and one third of the plant species in old fields in New Jersey were alien to North America. It is of the remaining two thirds (roughly 100 species) that we can ask, Where was a sun-loving field flora growing in a landscape that was heavily forested? According to Braun (1950, p. 7), "When the first settlers colonized the Atlantic seaboard ... they found an endless expanse of forest broken only by swamps and bogs, by cliffs or river bluffs too steep for forest, by windfalls and burns, by small grassy openings such as the serpentine barrens of the northern Piedmont, and by the prairie patches and 'barrens' of the interior.' Four hypotheses can be suggested to account for the location of native field plants in the presettlement landscape. (1) They evolved on agricultural land abandoned by Indians far back in time. (2) Native field plants migrated eastward from prairies and savannas at the western margin of the deciduous forest with the onset of extensive clearing for settlement and agriculture and with the development of continuous east-west corridors of open field habitat along railroads and canals. (3) Native field plants were true pioneer or early successional species that colonized temporary forest openings caused by wind, fire, and other kinds of