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| Author(s): |
Camila Yumi Mandai
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Biociências (IBIOC/SB) |
| Defense date: | 2010-10-26 |
| Examining board members: |
Paulo Inácio de Knegt López de Prado;
João Luis Ferreira Batista;
Cristina Camargo Banks Leite
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| Advisor: | Paulo Inácio de Knegt López de Prado |
| Abstract | |
Species abundance distribution (SADs) had an important role in community ecology, revealing one of the most well established pattern in ecology, which is the high dominance by just a few species. This pattern stimulated the proposal of innumerous theoretical models in an attempt to explain the ecological mechanism which could generate it. However these models can also be a descriptor of the communities and their parameters synthetic measures of diversity. Such parameters can be used as response variables to environmental impact affecting communities. Adopting this approach our objective was to compare bird communities through areas of different levels of fragmentation, using as response variable the estimates of α, the parameter of Fishers logseries. Considering the implicit assumption of equal capture probabilities among species in SAD models we also investigated the degree of sensibility of the models when this assumption is disrespected, once it seems so unrealistic. Thus simulating communities in which species had equal and different capture probabilities among them we found that increases in the degrees of heterogeneity in species catchability lead to a gain in biases on the model selection and parameters estimations. Additionally, since our goal in this study was identify some factors that may influence the diversity in communities, even with the biases, if they were constant, maybe it was still possible to test the relation. In this context we proceed to another stage of simulations, where we generate communities whose parameter values had a linear relationship with remnant area. What we find is that regardless of equal or unequal in catchability of species, when the effect exists, it is always detected, but depending on the degree of difference in probability of catching the species, the effect may be underestimated. Further, in the absence of effect, it can be falsely detected, depending on the degree of heterogeneity of capture probabilities among species, but always with very low estimates for the effect non-existent. With these results, we could quantify the types of effects of heterogeneity on capture probabilities and proceed with the analysis of the effects of fragmentation. What we showed is that the landscape with 10% vegetation cover, the fragment area appears to influence the diversity of the fragments rather than isolation, and landscape in 50% of plant cover, the isolation variable becomes more important than area to explain the data. But in a more parsimonious interpretation, we consider the estimated of the effects too low to consider that they actually exist. Therefore, we conclude that the fragmentation process probably has no effect on the hierarchy of species abundance. However, in a description of the number of captures of each species in the fragments, weighted by the number of catches sampled in continuous adjacent areas revealed that the fragment size may be important in determining which species will be extinct or benefit and that perhaps the quality of matrix is decisive for the maintenance of highly sensitive species in small fragments. Thus, we demonstrated that while the SAD are not significantly affected by fragmentation, the position in the hierarchy of species abundances can change a lot, which reflects the different sensitivity of species to area and isolation in the fragments. (AU) | |