Abstract

FLOREZ JARAMILLO, Luz Ángela  and  BARONA CORTES, Eliana. Diversity of Reptiles Associated withThree Contrasting Areas in a Tropical Dry Forest (La Dorada and Victoria, Caldas). rev. cienc. [online]. 2016, vol.20, n.spe, pp.109-123. ISSN 0121-1935.

At present, tropical dry forests are among the most threatened ecosystems in the Neotropics. Likewise, the faunal diversity and especially the group of reptiles that inhabit this ecosystem is poorly known. The objective was to characterize the diversity of reptiles in hacienda La Española (Caldas, Colombia). Three landscape units were differentiated: mining intervention areas, silvopastoral systems and forest areas. A visual encounter survey (VES) was implemented. In the forest, the number of species and individual abundance were the highest compared with the silvopastoral system and the mining area. The species accumulation curves and species richness indicators showed that more sampling effort is required to characterize the reptile community as a whole. The structure and composition of reptiles were significantly different between forest cover and intervened areas. However, the presence of about 50% of species in three habitats reveal the importance of beginning to evaluate different coverage types (natural and transformed) that make up the landscape and understanding how they could be an important element for conservation and management of diversity in semi-natural landscapes

Keywords : fragmentation; mining; silvopastoral; reptiles; dry forest.

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