Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Underlying and proximate drivers of biodiversity changes in Mesoamerican biosphere reserves

2024; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 121; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.2305944121

1091-6490

Daniel Auliz-Ortiz, Julieta Benítez‐Malvido, Víctor Arroyo‐Rodríguez, Rodolfo Dirzo, Miguel Ángel Pérez‐Farrera, Roberto Luna-Reyes, Eduardo Mendoza, Mariana Yólotl Álvarez-Añorve, Javier Álvarez-Sánchez, Dulce María Arias-Ataide, Luis Daniel Avila‐Cabadilla, Francisco Botello, Marco Braasch, Alejandro Casas, Delfino Álvaro Campos-Villanueva, José Rogelio Cedeño‐Vázquez, Cuauhtémoc Chávez, Rosamond Coates, Yanus A. Dechnik-Vázquez, Marı́a del Coro Arizmendi, Pedro Américo D. Dias, Óscar Dorado, Paula L. Enríquez, Griselda Escalona‐Segura, Verónica Farías, Mario E. Favila, Andrés García, Leccinum J. García-Morales, Fernando Gavito-Pérez, Héctor Gómez‐Domínguez, Fernando González-García, Arturo González‐Zamora, Ramón Cuevas‐Guzmán, Enrique Haro-Belchez, Arturo Hernández-Huerta, Omar Hernández‐Ordóñez, Anna Horváth, Guillermo Ibarra‐Manríquez, Pablo A. Lavín-Murcio, Rafael Lira‐Saade, Karime López-Díaz, M. Cristina MacSwiney G., Salvador Mandujano, Rubén Martínez‐Camilo, José Guadalupe Martínez-Ávalos, Nayely Martínez‐Meléndez, Alan Monroy-Ojeda, Francisco Mora, Arturo Mora‐Olivo, Carlos Muench, Juan Luis Peña‐Mondragón, Ruth Percino‐Daniel, Neptalí Ramírez‐Marcial, Rafael Reyna‐Hurtado, Erick Rubén Rodríguez-Ruíz, Víctor Sánchez‐Cordero, Ireri Suazo‐Ortuño, Sergio Alejandro Terán-Juárez, Ingrid Abril Valdivieso Pérez, Vivian Valencia, David Valenzuela‐Galván, Jorge Albino Vargas Contreras, José Raúl Vázquez‐Pérez, Jorge H. Vega‐Rivera, Crystian Sadiel Venegas-Barrera, Miguel Martínez‐Ramos,

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Protected areas are of paramount relevance to conserving wildlife and ecosystem contributions to people. Yet, their conservation success is increasingly threatened by human activities including habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and species overexploitation. Thus, understanding the underlying and proximate drivers of anthropogenic threats is urgently needed to improve protected areas’ effectiveness, especially in the biodiversity-rich tropics. We addressed this issue by analyzing expert-provided data on long-term biodiversity change (last three decades) over 14 biosphere reserves from the Mesoamerican Biodiversity Hotspot. Using multivariate analyses and structural equation modeling, we tested the influence of major socioeconomic drivers (demographic, economic, and political factors), spatial indicators of human activities (agriculture expansion and road extension), and forest landscape modifications (forest loss and isolation) as drivers of biodiversity change. We uncovered a significant proliferation of disturbance-tolerant guilds and the loss or decline of disturbance-sensitive guilds within reserves causing a “winner and loser” species replacement over time. Guild change was directly related to forest spatial changes promoted by the expansion of agriculture and roads within reserves. High human population density and low nonfarming occupation were identified as the main underlying drivers of biodiversity change. Our findings suggest that to mitigate anthropogenic threats to biodiversity within biosphere reserves, fostering human population well-being via sustainable, nonfarming livelihood opportunities around reserves is imperative.