Identifying core habitat before it's too late: The case of Bombina variegata, an internationally endangered amphibian

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBiodiversity and Conservation
Volume23
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)775-780
Number of pages6
ISSN0960-3115
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.03.2014

Bibliographical note

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.

    Research areas

  • Ecosystems Research - Amphibian decline, Body condition, Land-use change, Traditional agriculture, Yellow-bellied toad

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Creating Value from in-Vehicle Data
  2. Activity-based working
  3. Adjust for windows
  4. 'KNOW WHY' thinking as a new approach to systems thinking
  5. The Role of Network Size for the Robustness of Centrality Measures
  6. The case survey method and applications in political science
  7. Guest editorial
  8. Managing Global Production Networks
  9. Complexity Measures of Traffic Scenarios
  10. How problem-based or direct instructional case-based learning environments influence pre-service teachers’ cognitive load, motivation and emotions
  11. Does symbolic representation through class signalling appeal to voters? Evidence from a conjoint experiment
  12. Conditions of One-Way and Two-Way Approaches in Strategic Start-Up Communication
  13. Comparative study of resonant circuit for power transmission via inductive link
  14. Applying Necessity and Proportionality to Anti-Terrorist Self-Defence
  15. A Bayesian EAP-Based Nonlinear Extension of Croon and Van Veldhoven’s Model for Analyzing Data from Micro–Macro Multilevel Designs
  16. Editorial
  17. Competence-Oriented Teaching
  18. A Person-Centered Approach for Analyzing Multidimensional Integration in Collaboration Between Educational Researchers and Practitioners
  19. It’s All Method
  20. Foundational Aspects of Polycentric Governance
  21. Microstructure and corrosion of AZ91 with small amounts of cerium
  22. Tree species and functional traits but not species richness affect interrill erosion processes in young subtropical forests
  23. Metamodelizing the Territory
  24. Why Notational Iconicity is a Form of Operational Iconicity
  25. Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change
  26. Is the Y/F Index Suitable for Population Genetic Studies?
  27. Gläserne Bienen (1957)
  28. Understanding of capacity in 3rd grade
  29. Kemp-Reader
  30. How do distinct facets of tree diversity and community assembly respond to environmental variables in the subtropical Atlantic Forest?
  31. Gross, Richard. Understanding Grief: An Introduction, Routledge, 2016
  32. A Multilab Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect
  33. How to Curate Diversity and Otherness in Global Performance Art