Difficult times for amphibians: Effects of land-use change at the local and landscape scales in the Iberá Wetlands

Abstract

Land-use change and management practices have led to habitat loss, one of the greatest factors in biodiversity decline. Particularly, amphibians comprise the highest number of threatened vertebrate species at the global scale. In this work, amphibian communities were analysed in three differing landscapes: a protected wetland, a livestock-impaired rangeland and a pine afforestation. In each landscape, amphibian species were sampled. Land-cover type and composition, as well as primary vegetation types were characterised at the landscape and local scale, respectively. The relationship between these environmental variables and the amphibian communities was analysed. Twenty-one amphibian species were identified; the protected and afforested landscapes were the richest, whereas the rangeland showed the lowest species richness and diversity estimates. At the local scale, vegetation, water coverage and land-use category explained the higher presence of amphibian species and their abundance. These results show how different land-uses, especially livestock farming, modify the composition of amphibian communities. This work constitutes a foundation for the development of sustainable management practices for conserving amphibians in landscape-level altered habitats.