Terrestrial mammal responses to oil palm dominated landscapes in Colombia
Pardo, Lain E., Campbell, Mason J., Edwards, Will, Clements, Gopalasamy Reuben, and Laurance, William F. (2018) Terrestrial mammal responses to oil palm dominated landscapes in Colombia. PLoS ONE, 13 (5). e0197539.
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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.
| Item ID: | 53809 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| Keywords: | oil palm cultivation, agricultural expansion, neotropics, biodiversity impacts, Colombia |
| Additional Information: | © 2018 Pardo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Funders: | Australian Laureate Fellowship, Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia (Colciencias) |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Jul 2018 02:59 |
| FoR Codes: | 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960899 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity of Environments not elsewhere classified @ 100% |
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