Identifying core habitat before it's too late: The case of Bombina variegata, an internationally endangered amphibian
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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Identifying core habitat before it's too late : The case of Bombina variegata, an internationally endangered amphibian. / Scheele, Ben C.; Boyd, C.E.; Fischer, J. et al.
in: Biodiversity and Conservation, Jahrgang 23, Nr. 3, 01.03.2014, S. 775-780.Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Identifying core habitat before it's too late
T2 - The case of Bombina variegata, an internationally endangered amphibian
AU - Scheele, Ben C.
AU - Boyd, C.E.
AU - Fischer, J.
AU - Fletcher, A.W.
AU - Hanspach, J.
AU - Hartel, T.
N1 - Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and H. von Wehrden for insightful discussions. BS wassupported by a Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions Early Career Researcher visiting fellowship. TH was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship. JF was supported by a Sofja Kov-alevskaja Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
PY - 2014/3/1
Y1 - 2014/3/1
N2 - Impending land-use change, including agricultural intensification, is increasingly threatening biodiversity in traditional rural landscapes. To ensure the persistence of species that are vulnerable to land-use change it is necessary to identify and protect high quality habitat before species start to decline. Given that many potentially vulnerable species are still widespread in traditional rural landscapes, it is difficult to identify particularly important locations for such species. Presence-absence data on a given species may have limited application in such cases. As an alternative to presence-absence data, we investigated the influence of environmental variables on the physiological body condition of Bombina variegata (yellow-bellied toad) in a traditional rural landscape in Transylvania, Romania. The species is internationally endangered but remains common throughout our study area. Based on body condition measurements of 550 toads from 60 ponds, we found that toads in forest ponds had significantly better body condition than those in pasture ponds, indicating that forest landscapes provided particularly high quality habitat. We suggest that measures such as body condition-in addition to distribution data-could have considerable application in identifying high quality habitat for other species that are still widespread in traditional landscapes, but have declined in modernised, but otherwise similar landscapes.
AB - Impending land-use change, including agricultural intensification, is increasingly threatening biodiversity in traditional rural landscapes. To ensure the persistence of species that are vulnerable to land-use change it is necessary to identify and protect high quality habitat before species start to decline. Given that many potentially vulnerable species are still widespread in traditional rural landscapes, it is difficult to identify particularly important locations for such species. Presence-absence data on a given species may have limited application in such cases. As an alternative to presence-absence data, we investigated the influence of environmental variables on the physiological body condition of Bombina variegata (yellow-bellied toad) in a traditional rural landscape in Transylvania, Romania. The species is internationally endangered but remains common throughout our study area. Based on body condition measurements of 550 toads from 60 ponds, we found that toads in forest ponds had significantly better body condition than those in pasture ponds, indicating that forest landscapes provided particularly high quality habitat. We suggest that measures such as body condition-in addition to distribution data-could have considerable application in identifying high quality habitat for other species that are still widespread in traditional landscapes, but have declined in modernised, but otherwise similar landscapes.
KW - Ecosystems Research
KW - Amphibian decline
KW - Body condition
KW - Land-use change
KW - Traditional agriculture
KW - Yellow-bellied toad
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893938784&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10531-014-0624-7
DO - 10.1007/s10531-014-0624-7
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:84893938784
VL - 23
SP - 775
EP - 780
JO - Biodiversity and Conservation
JF - Biodiversity and Conservation
SN - 0960-3115
IS - 3
ER -