%0 Journal Article
%T Are Plant Species¡¯ Richness and Diversity Influenced by Fragmentation at a Microscale?
%A Jes¨²s Aguirre-Guti¨¦rrez
%J International Journal of Biodiversity
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/384698
%X It is argued that forest fragmentation has negative effects on biodiversity at the short and long term; however, these effects might be dependent on the specific vegetation of the study area and its intrinsic characteristics. The processes leading to fragmentation are very diverse and many of them have anthropogenic causes as logging actions and clearings for agricultural fields. Furthermore, it is thought that scale plays an important role in the expected effects of fragmentation on biodiversity. In this study the effect of forest fragmentation and its impact on the woody plants species, richness and diversity are analysed considering three vegetation types in a poorly studied and difficult access biodiversity hotspot in northern Mexico. The results show that the effects of fragmentation are dependent on the vegetation type and that these are not strongly related to the species richness, and diversity in a microscale (100£¿m2). Fragmentation effects on biodiversity must be analysed in a broad scale, considering the fragment as a whole. Furthermore, conservation priority should be given to the larger fragments, which could potentially maintain a higher portion of biodiversity. Management should also be focused on increasing the connectivity between these big and medium size forest patches. 1. Introduction The processes generating forest loss and habitat fragmentation are recognized as a principal cause of biodiversity decline and are the greatest ecological problem in tropical developing countries [1¨C6]. These processes increase the vulnerability of the species that inhabit the forest ecosystem by reducing the suitable habitat and by generating patch isolation [7, 8]. Thus, habitat loss and fragmentation are usually perceived as having negative effects on biodiversity (i.e., [9, 10]) due to the reduction in area available, which decreases the species¡¯ effective population sizes, and to the increase in the number of smaller forest fragments, which also modify the microenvironmental characteristics of the landscape. However, there are studies that claim that forest fragmentation can have positive [11, 12] or even inconsistent effects [13], depending on the species analysed and the landscape size and structure. It is argued that larger fragments might contain more species than small fragments and that when the patch¡¯s area decreases, it has higher implications for core area species than for the edge ones. However, also contradictory results have been obtained (i.e., [14¨C16]) reflecting the need of more information resulting from field-based studies carried
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/384698/