Context: The advance of anthropic activities on the Amazonian frontier has provoked an intense process of forest fragmentation that reduces biodiversity and subjects the species to a situation of high vulnerability.
Objectives: To test the relation of fragment size, isolation and characterization of the forest fragments matrix, on the wealth of amphibians of the order Anura, reptiles of the order Squamata and mammals of small, medium and large size.
Methods: The study was carried out in 12 fragments in the northeast of the Amazon. The size of the fragment was calculated in hectares, the isolation in ENN_MN (mean of the euclidean distance of the nearest neighbors) and the matrix was organized into categories. These landscape metrics were considered as explanatory variables and calculated on three spatial scales: 1, 2 and 3 km. The relationship of the metrics with the richness of terrestrial vertebrates was evaluated through multiple regressions with model selection.
Results: 130 species of terrestrial vertebrates were recorded. There was no significant effect of fragment size on spatial scales for any group of species. The isolation was significant only in the 3 km scale for the group of amphibian and snake species. The category of open areas in the matrix was significant in the three spatial scales for the group of species of lizards and mammals of medium and large size.
Conclusions: The landscape configuration is extremely important in the context of fragmentation, there were different responses from taxonomic groups, possibly due to differences in habitat use.
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