부산대학교 도서관

Anuran amphibians are extremely sensitive to changes in the environment and are severely threatened with extinction by human activities. The conversion of natural habitats to tree plantations is expanding in southern Brazil, emphasising the need for both scientists and society to understand the potential effects of this practice on animal communities. Here, we evaluated whether the richness, composition and abundance of leaf‐litter frogs change among natural forests, plantations of the native Araucaria angustifolia and plantations of an introduced pine Pinus spp. We obtained data on the composition of the leaf‐litter frog assemblages by sampling natural forest and tree plantations in the Passo Fundo National Forest, southern Brazil. We sampled leaf‐litter frogs using pitfall trap arrays from March 2017 to February 2018. We used generalised linear mixed models to estimate the effect of habitat type on leaf‐litter frogs while considering variation induced by season effect and spatial autocorrelation. We recorded 311 individual leaf‐litter frogs belonging to nine species and five families. We did not find differences in species richness and composition, total abundance and abundance of the most frequent species Physalaemus cuvieri, P. carrizorum and Rhinella icterica among Pinus plantations, Araucaria angustifolia plantations and natural forests. These results indicate that tree plantations and natural forests can be equally suitable to leaf‐litter frogs. Such suitability is promoted by the light levels of management exerted on these plantations, the old age of the plantations and the heterogeneous mosaic of habitat types maintained within this National Forest. Our study shows that some management decisions can preserve habitat quality to wildlife in modified landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]