Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:50:21.200Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Using connectivity metrics and niche modelling to explore the occurrence of the northern crested newt Triturus cristatus (Amphibia, Caudata) in a traditionally managed landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2010

TIBOR HARTEL ,
SZILÁRD NEMES ,
KINGA ÖLLERER ,
DAN COGĂLNICEANU ,
COSMIN MOGA  and
JAN W. ARNTZEN
TIBOR HARTEL*
Affiliation:
Mihai Eminescu Trust, Cojocarilor 10, 545400 Sighisoara, Romania Babeş-Bolyai University, Department of Taxonomy and Ecology, Clinicilor 5–7, 400006 Cluj-Napoca, Romania Research Department Terrestrial Zoology, Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, PO Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
SZILÁRD NEMES
Affiliation:
Mihai Eminescu Trust, Cojocarilor 10, 545400 Sighisoara, Romania
KINGA ÖLLERER
Affiliation:
Institute of Biology, Romanian Academy, Splaiul Independenţei 296, 060031 Bucharest, Romania
DAN COGĂLNICEANU
Affiliation:
Ovidius University Constanta, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Blv. Mamaia 124, Romania
COSMIN MOGA
Affiliation:
Mihai Eminescu Trust, Cojocarilor 10, 545400 Sighisoara, Romania
JAN W. ARNTZEN
Affiliation:
Research Department Terrestrial Zoology, Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, PO Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
*
*Correspondence: Dr Tibor Hartel Tel/Fax: +40 265 77600 e-mail: asobeka@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Spatial models are increasingly employed to help understand the distribution of organisms and establish conservation priorities. Classic patch-orientated models may have limited power to accurately predict the organisms' distributions. Pond breeding amphibians are appropriate study organisms because of their complex life cycle, low dispersal and sensitivity to environmental conditions. Here connectivity metrics and niche modelling were used to predict the occurrence of the northern crested newt in a rural landscape from central Romania. Pond-related variables, such as macrophyte cover and the presence of predatory fish, were the most important predictors of newt occurrence, followed by one landscape-related variable (urbanization) and a connectivity metric (nearest neighbouring occupied pond). Most of the landscape and connectivity variables were not adequate predictors, presumably because most of the terrestrial habitats in this traditionally used rural landscape are ecologically optimal for amphibians. Conservation measures for the northern crested newt should promote the preservation of traditional extensive agricultural practices and discourage stocking of ponds with predatory fish.

Keywords

amphibianconservationhabitatmatrixoccurrencepatchRomania
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 195 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arntzen, J.W. & Wallis, G.P. (1991) Restricted gene flow in a moving hybrid zone of the newts Triturus cristatus and T. marmoratus in Western France. Evolution 45: 805–826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, P. & Tu, J. (2004) Bootstrap methods for developing predictive models. The American Statistician 58: 131–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beebee, T.J.C. (1997) Changes in dewpond numbers and amphibian diversity over 20 years on chalk downland in Sussex, England. Biological Conservation 81: 215–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cogălniceanu, D. & Cogălniceanu, G.C. (2010) An enlarged European Union challenges priority settings in conservation. Biodiversity and Conservation 19: 1471–1483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ficetola, G.F. & De Bernardi, F. (2004) Amphibians in a human dominated landscape: the community structure is related to habitat features and isolation. Biological Conservation 119: 219–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, J., Lindenmayer, D.B. & Fazey, I. (2004) Appreciating ecological complexity: habitat contours as a conceptual landscape model. Conservation Biology 18: 1245–1253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbons, J.W. (2003) Terrestrial habitat: a vital component for herpetofauna of isolated wetlands. Wetlands 23: 630–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, D.E. (1978) The metapopulation ecology of the red spotted newt, Notophtalmus viridescens Rafinesque. Ecological Monographs 48: 145–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafson, D.H., Andersen, A.S.L., Mikusinski, G. & Malmgren, J.C. (2009) Pond quality determinants of occurrence patterns of northern crested newts (Triturus cristatus). Journal of Herpetology 43: 300–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halley, J.M., Oldham, R. & Arntzen, J.W. (1996) Predicting the persistence of amphibian populations with the help of a spatial model. Journal of Applied Ecology 33: 455–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanski, I. (1998) Metapopulation dynamics. Nature 396: 41–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanski, I. & Gilpin, M. (1991) Metapopulation dynamics: brief history and conceptual domain. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 42: 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartel, T. (2008) Ecological and faunistical studies on amphibians in the Tarnava Mare basin. Ph.D. dissertation, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania.Google Scholar
Hartel, T. & Öllerer, K. (2009) Local turnover and factors influencing the persistence of amphibians in permanent ponds from the Saxon landscapes of Transylvania. North-Western Journal of Zoology 5: 40–52.Google Scholar
Hartel, T., Nemes, Sz., Cogălniceanu, D., Öllerer, K., Schweiger, O., Moga, C.I. & Demeter, L. (2007) The effect of fish and habitat complexity on amphibians. Hydrobiologia 583: 173–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartel, T., Nemes, Sz., Cogălniceanu, D., Öllerer, K., Moga, C.I., Lesbarreres, D. & Demeter, L. (2009) Pond and landscape determinants of Rana dalmatina population sizes in a Romanian rural landscape. Acta Oecologica 35: 53–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartel, T., Öllerer, K., Cogălniceanu, D., Nemes, Sz., Moga, C.I. & Demeter, L. (2010 b) Pond-based survey of amphibians in a Saxon cultural landscape from Transylvania (Romania). Italian Journal of Zoology 77: 61–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartel, T., Schweiger, O., Öllerer, K., Cogălniceanu, D. & Arntzen, J.W. (2010 a) Amphibian distribution in a traditionally managed rural landscape of Eastern Europe: probing the effect of landscape composition. Biological Conservation 143: 1118–1124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houlahan, J.E. & Findlay, C.S. (2003) The effects of adjacent land use on wetland amphibian species richness and community composition. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 60: 1078–1094.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, G. E. (1957) Concluding remarks. Population studies: animal ecology and demography. Cold Springs Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 22: 415–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joly, P., Miaud, C., Lehmann, A. & Grolet, O. (2001) Habitat matrix effect on pond occupancy in newts. Conservation Biology 15: 239–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kloskowski, J. (2010) Fish farms as amphibian habitats: factors affecting amphibian species richness and community structure at carp ponds in Poland. Environmental Conservation 37 DOI:10.1017/S0376892910000494CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laan, R. & Verboom, B. (1990) Effects of pool size and isolation on amphibian communities. Biological Conservation 54: 251–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malmgren, J.C. (2001) Evolutionary ecology of newts. Ph.D. dissertation. Studies in Biology 1, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.Google Scholar
Marsh, D.M. & Trenham, P.C. (2001) Metapopulation dynamics and amphibian conservation. Conservation Biology 15: 40–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moilanen, A. & Nieminen, M. (2002) Simple connectivity measures in spatial ecology. Ecology 83: 1131–1145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oldham, R.S., Keeble, J., Swan, M.J.S. & Jeffcote, M. (2000) Evaluating the suitability of habitat for the northern crested newt (Triturus cristatus). Herpetological Journal 10: 143–155.Google Scholar
Pellet, J., Fleishman, E., Dobkin, D.S., Gander, A. & Murphy, D.D. (2007) An empirical evaluation of the area and isolation paradigm of metapopulation dynamics. Biological Conservation 136: 483–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pellet, J., Guisan, A. & Perrin, N. (2004) A concentric analysis of the impact of urbanization on the threatened European tree frog in an agricultural landscape. Conservation Biology 18: 1599–1606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pope, S.E., Fahrig, L. & Merriam, N.G. (2000) Landscape complementation and metapopulation effects on leopard frog populations. Ecology 81: 2498–2508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, B., McAlpine, C.A., Kutt, A.S., Phinn, S.R., Pullar, D.V. & Ludwig, J.A. (2009) Continuum or discrete patch landscape models for savanna birds? Towards a pluralistic approach. Oikos 32: 745–756.Google Scholar
Prugh, L.R. (2009) An evaluation of patch connectivity measures. Ecological Applications 19: 1300–1310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prugh, L.R., Hodges, K.E., Sinclair, A.R.E. & Brashares, J.J. (2008) Effect of area and isolation on fragmented animal populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 20771–20775.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ray, N., Lehmann, A. & Joly, P. (2002) Modeling spatial distribution of amphibian populations: a GIS approach based on habitat matrix permeability. Biodiversity and Conservation 11: 2143–2165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauerbrei, W. & Schumacher, M. A. (1992) A bootstrap resampling procedure for model building: application to the Cox regression model. Statistics in Medicine 11: 2093–2109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, B.R. & Pellet, J. (2005) Relative importance of population processes and habitat characteristics in determining site occupancy of two anurans. Journal of Wildlife Management 69: 884–893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, B.R. & Van Buskirk, J. (2001) Predator induced phenotypic plasticity in larvae of crested newt, Triturus cristatus. Sonderheft 4: 179–191.Google Scholar
Semlitsch, R.D. (2008) Differentiating migration and dispersal processes for pond-breeding amphibians. Journal of Wildlife Management 72: 260–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sjögren-Gulve, P. (1994) Distribution and extinction patterns within a northern metapopulation of the pool frog, Rana lessonae. Ecology 75: 357–1367.Google Scholar
Skei, J.K., Dolmen, D.L., Rønning, L. & Ringsby, T.R. (2006) Habitat use during the aquatic phase of the newts Triturus vulgaris (L.) and T. cristatus (Laurenti) in central Norway: proposition for a conservation and monitoring area. Amphibia-Reptilia 27: 309–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, C.D. & Kunin, W.E. (1999) The spatial structure of populations. Journal of Animal Ecology 68: 647–657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tischendorf, L. & Fahrig, L. (2000) On the usage and measurement of landscape connectivity. Oikos 90: 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tryjanowski, P., Sparks, T., Rybacki, M. & Berger, L. (2006) Is body size of the water frog Rana esculenta complex responding to climate change? Naturwissenschaften 93: 110–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tscharntke, T., Klein, A.M., Steffan-Dewenter, I. & Thies, C. (2005) Landscape perspectives on agricultural intensification and biodiversity: ecosystem service management. Ecology Letters 8: 857–874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Buskirk, J. (2005) Local and landscape influence on amphibian occurrence and abundance. Ecology 86: 1936–1947.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zanini, F., Pellet, J. & Schmidt, B.R. (2009) The transferability of distribution models across regions: an amphibian case study. Diversity and Distributions 15: 469–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar