Combined effects of climatic gradient and domestic livestock grazing on reptile community structure in a heterogeneous agroecosystem

Oecologia
Guy RotemYaron Ziv

Abstract

Grazing plays an important role in shaping ecological communities in human-related ecosystems. Although myriad studies have explored the joint effect of grazing and climate on plant communities, this interactive effect has rarely been studied in animals. We hypothesized that the effect of grazing on the reptile community varies along a climatic gradient in relation to the effect of grazing on habitat characteristics, and that grazing differentially affects reptiles of different biogeographic regions. We tested our hypotheses by collecting data on environmental characteristics and by trapping reptiles in four heterogeneous landscapes experiencing differing grazing intensities and distributed along a sharp climatic gradient. We found that while reptile diversity increased with grazing intensity at the mesic end of the gradient, it decreased with grazing intensity at the arid end. Moreover, the proportion of reptile species of differing biogeographic origins varied with the interactive effect of climate and grazing. The representation of species originating in arid biogeographic zones was highest at the arid end of the climatic gradient, and representation increased with grazing intensity within this area. Regardless of the climat...Continue Reading

References

Jan 25, 2006·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Alexander M BronsteinRon Kimmel
Apr 20, 2007·Biology Letters·Leif Egil LoeGunnar Austrheim
Jul 1, 1998·Trends in Ecology & Evolution·H Olff, M E Ritchie
Dec 6, 2011·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Yoni GavishMichael L Rosenzweig

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