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Peer-reviewedCC BYNature Ecology & Evolution

Landscape quality drives ecological responses to habitat loss and fragmentation

  • Robert J. Fletcher1,2
  • Thomas A. H. Smith3,4
  • Maggie M. Jones4
  • Friederike Schellenberg4
  • Rikki Payne4
  • Nicholas Kortessis5
  • Emilio Miguel Bruna6,4
  • Robert D. Holt7
7 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA. [email protected]
  2. 2Department of Zoology, Conservation Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [email protected]
  3. 3Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
  4. 4Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
  5. 5Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, NC, USA
  6. 6Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
  7. 7Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
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Abstract

Studies have suggested that the quality of the lands surrounding habitat patches can modify the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on species and influence biodiversity predictions across regions. As landscape matrices tend to be complex and vary with habitat change, isolating such effects is challenging. Here we disentangle the effects of habitat loss, fragmentation and surrounding landscape quality in a large, multiscale manipulative experiment on a plant-herbivore system. We find that habitat loss, fragmentation and surrounding matrix quality all affect survival rates, with the greatest negative effects of fragmentation and lower matrix quality under high habitat loss. Demographic rate changes resulted in strong negative effects of habitat loss, fragmentation and low matrix quality on population size at the landscape scale. Our findings indicate that the benefits of high landscape quality are greater in landscapes with low habitat fragmentation, contesting the common expectation that the surrounding matrix matters only in the most fragmented landscapes. This underscores that the quality of the surrounding landscape can have outsized effects on biodiversity in remaining habitats.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{fletcher2026landscape,
  title = {{Landscape quality drives ecological responses to habitat loss and fragmentation}},
  author = {Robert J. Fletcher and Thomas A. H. Smith and Maggie M. Jones and Friederike Schellenberg and Rikki Payne and Nicholas Kortessis and Emilio Miguel Bruna and Robert D. Holt},
  journal = {Nature Ecology \& Evolution},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  doi = {10.1038/s41559-026-03095-1},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03095-1},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Landscape quality drives ecological responses to habitat loss and fragmentation
AU  - Robert J. Fletcher
AU  - Thomas A. H. Smith
AU  - Maggie M. Jones
AU  - Friederike Schellenberg
AU  - Rikki Payne
AU  - Nicholas Kortessis
AU  - Emilio Miguel Bruna
AU  - Robert D. Holt
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/17
JO  - Nature Ecology & Evolution
DO  - 10.1038/s41559-026-03095-1
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03095-1
AB  - Studies have suggested that the quality of the lands surrounding habitat patches can modify the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on species and influence biodiversity predictions across regions. As landscape matrices tend to be complex and vary with habitat change, isolating such effects is challenging. Here we disentangle the effects of habitat loss, fragmentation and surrounding landscape quality in a large, multiscale manipulative experiment on a plant-herbivore system. We find that habitat loss, fragmentation and surrounding matrix quality all affect survival rates, with the greatest negative effects of fragmentation and lower matrix quality under high habitat loss. Demographic rate changes resulted in strong negative effects of habitat loss, fragmentation and low matrix quality on population size at the landscape scale. Our findings indicate that the benefits of high landscape quality are greater in landscapes with low habitat fragmentation, contesting the common expectation that the surrounding matrix matters only in the most fragmented landscapes. This underscores that the quality of the surrounding landscape can have outsized effects on biodiversity in remaining habitats.
SN  - 2397-334X
ER  -