Wood-pastures are socio-ecological systems covering vast areas in Europe. Although used for grazing and production of various forest goods, wood-pastures harbour a rich biodiversity usually considered as High Nature Value Farmlands. However, socio-economic pressures driving the transformation these valuable landscapes from multi-functional, heterogeneous habitats to homogeneous through either i...

BACKGROUND The organization of networks of interacting species, such as plants and animals engaged in mutualisms, strongly influences the ecology and evolution of partner communities. Habitat fragmentation is a globally pervasive form of spatial heterogeneity that could profoundly impact the structure of mutualist networks. This is particularly true for biodiversity-rich tropical ecosystems, wh...

Abstract Ecological communities of tropical regions respond to habitat configuration, being negatively affected by anthropogenic habitats. In the tropics, mountainous highland landscapes sustain ecological with contrasting responses transformation. This study assessed effect different habitats under disturbance regimes on dung beetle assemblage that inhabits a Andean landscape in Colombia. The ...

The use of pastures is part of common herd management practices for livestock animals, but contagion between animals located on neighbouring pastures is one of the major modes of infectious disease transmission between herds. At the population level, this transmission is strongly constrained by the spatial organization of pastures. The aim of this study was to answer two questions: (i) is the s...

Fragments of kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) forest provide a major opportunity for conservation of indigenous biodiversity in the heavily deforested landscape of the Waikato Basin, New Zealand. However, there is little documented information on what indigenous fauna survives in these fragments. Using Malaise traps set 20 m and 50 m into fragments and 20 m and 50 m into the adjacent pastur...

Decision-makers increasingly seek scientific guidance on investing in nature, but biodiversity remains difficult to estimate across diverse landscapes. Here, we develop empirically based models for quantifying biodiversity across space. We focus on agricultural lands in the tropical forest biome, wherein lies the greatest potential to conserve or lose biodiversity. We explore two questions, dra...

abstract in this study the effects of land use changes from pasturelands to croplands on soil microbiological and biochemical properties were studied in kangaver, dehno and soltanye regions. composite soil samples from 0-20 and 20-40 cm depths of pasture and cultivated lands were taken from kangaver, dehno and soltanye regions, and soil microbial respiration, microbial biomass c and n, and urea...

Many studies on the population dynamics of questing ticks on pastures and of parasitic ticks on cattle have been conducted. Few, however, have attempted to link the two in a single study. This study aimed to assess the population dynamics of questing ixodid ticks on pastures and of adult ticks on two breeds of cattle with different levels of susceptibility to tick infestation on the same pastur...

Bat species richness in Neotropical localities is generally higher than that of any other group of mammals, and surveys of local bat assemblages may provide useful data for conservation management plans. Although the bat fauna of the Rio de Janeiro state is currently one of the best known in Brazil, there are several localities not adequately surveyed yet, and most of them are in the mountainou...