Influência antrópica sobre a riqueza e abundância de anfíbios anuros em alagados de um remanescente de Mata Atlântica, Paraíba, Brasil

Abstract

The Neotropical Region has the highest rates of endemism and species richness of amphibians in the world, but there are many gaps in the evaluation of the structure of assemblages in neotropical environments, mainly in the Atlantic Forest. These environments suffer a gradual process of fragmentation resulting from anthropogenic activity, being characterized as a mosaic of forest patches with different disturbances regimes. In this context, the present study aimed to evaluate the anuran assemblages associated with puddles and flooded areas used as breeding sites in the Biological Reserve Guaribas, assessing the existence of patterns of resource use in along the anthropogenic disturbance and the influence of habitat and environmental variables. The samplings were made during the rainy season and wet season form 2013 and twelve environmental variables corresponding to physicochemical aspects of water and soil, as well as characteristics of the vegetation stratification. The environmental variables that contributed most to the dissimilarity between areas was described by PCA, the patterns in structuring the assemblage of anurans between areas was verified by nMDS, the environment/species matrices were related through analysis for CCA check the influence of these environmental factors on anuran assemblage. The hypotheses to be tested were: (1) there is a strong relationship between habitat structure with the anuran assemblages and (2) the environmental factors the puddles and flooded areas influence the patterns of the assemblages structure in a gradient of anthropic disturbance. Twenty species totaling 289 individuals were recorded. The results corroborate the patterns of distribution and richness of frogs in puddles and flooded areas and showed a strong influence of environmental factors. The variables that better explained the structure of the assemblies were related to vertical stratification of vegetation, litter depth, depth of the water body, pH and water temperature. there was a record of the use of 11 distinct microhabitats for reproductive activity, herbaceous vegetation in water and soil and dry soil were the most used. The widespread use of different microhabitats for several species, distributed in breeding sites, indicate the importance of these habitats for the conservation of local anurans in the Atlantic Forest.