Effects of habitat area and spatial configuration on biodiversity in an experimental intertidal community.

ABSTRACT: Isolating the effects of fragmentation per se (i.e., spatial configuration of habitat patches) on species richness is an ongoing challenge as habitat configuration often covaries with the amount of habitat. Consequently, there is a lack of experimental evidence for configurational effects on species richness in the whole landscape. Here, we developed a novel experimental system for testing the independent and interactive effects of habitat area and configuration on tropical intertidal species richness. Our results confirmed the expectation that average species richness would increase monotonically with habitat area. More intriguingly, we found mixed evidence for a non-monotonic relationship between species richness and fragmentation per se, with the highest richness at intermediate fragmen

SUBMITTER: Loke LHL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6851599 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature