Impacts of socio-political boundaries on small desert mammals of west-central Argentina

SPIRITO, M. F.; TABENI, S.

JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 vol. 131 p. 6 - 14

0140-1963

Human-induced land degradation modifies the structure of habitat boundaries, which may have consequencesfor ecosystem functioning. We determined the influence of socio-political boundaries definedfor a protected area embedded in a grazing matrix on a small mammal assemblage in a semiarid drylandof Argentina. We considered three boundaries combinations: ecological (within passive restoration sitesand within grazed sites); socio-political (between passive restoration and grazed sites); and interior sites(without boundary influence).We analyzed the influence of those boundaries on small mammal richnessand abundance. We also modeled species´ specific response to boundary characteristics. We found sharpdiscontinuities in structural variables at socio-political boundaries, in contrast to ecological boundaries atpassive restoration and grazed sites, which showed fuzzy boundaries. Richness of small mammals wassimilar among sites, while abundance was higher in socio-political boundaries compared with theinterior. There was no evidence of an edge effect on small mammals´ abundance at ecological boundaries,but such edge effect impacted abundance across socio-political boundaries. Identifying the best actionsto take advantage of socio-political boundaries is crucial to ensure landscape functional connectivity.