2017 ESA Annual Meeting (August 6 -- 11)

COS 138-8 - Of mice and coffee: Identifying landscape drivers of dispersal for a tropical small mammal in coffee farms

Thursday, August 10, 2017: 10:30 AM
C122, Oregon Convention Center
Beatriz Otero Jiménez1, Kevin Li2, John H. Vandermeer3 and Priscilla Tucker1, (1)Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, (2)Department of Crop Science, Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany, (3)Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Background/Question/Methods

Agricultural production has expanded rapidly in tropical regions, transforming the landscape and fragmenting tropical forests. However, little is known about the long-term effects of agricultural production practices (i.e., management intensification) on population connectivity and dispersal. Our study integrates genetic and landscape data to examine landscape factors influencing the connectivity of a tropical small mammal. Specifically, we investigated landscape factors driving the population structure of Heteromys goldmani, a common forest rodent, in a coffee agroecosystem. We evaluated 5 different landscape variables; (1) tree cover, (2) slope, (3) elevation, (4) distance-to-stream and (5) dispersal barriers (streams), to measure their influence in driving H. goldmanigenetic patterns in the coffee agroecosystem.

Results/Conclusions

Our results show that H. goldmani dispersal is limited in the coffee landscape, characterized by discrete genetic populations with limited gene flow. We found that all landscape variables, except streams, have a significant correlation with the observed genetic structure. These results suggest that streams do not represent a barrier to dispersal of H. goldmani in our study site. On the other hand, distance-to-stream was the variable with the strongest correlation with genetic structure. Areas close to streams in these coffee farms are steep, hard to access, and tend to be unmanaged. Our results suggest that these areas are serving as habitat or corridors, facilitating dispersal, and allowing H. goldmani to survive within the coffee farms.