Orchards and paddy differentially impact rock outcrop amphibians: Insights from community- and species-level responses

With agricultural demands increasing globally, determining the nature of impacts of different forms of agriculture on biodiversity, especially for threatened vertebrates and habitats, is critical to inform land management. This is especially true for open ecosystems such as the natural rock outcrops and amphibians, both of which are threatened by land-use change. Lateritic plateaus of the northern Western Ghats are rock outcrop ecosystems harboring endemic biodiversity. Since most of these plateaus are located outside protected areas and officially classified as wastelands, they are rapidly lost due to multiple human pressures, including agriculture. We compared amphibian composition, diversity, and species responses across these rocky plateaus (hereafter plateaus), orchards, and rice paddy in the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka biodiversity Hotspot, India. We sampled 50 belt transects across four geographically separated plateaus, covering three land-use classes in three of the plateaus, and recorded information on amphibians and their microhabitats. Each transect was sampled four times across the rainy season. We compared responses of amphibians across three land-use categories at the community level using Hill numbers, beta-diversity measures, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling, and at the species level using joint species distribution modeling. Converting plateaus to paddy and orchards significantly altered microhabitat availability by reducing the rock pool habitat availability in paddy and orchards, and increased deep, water-submerged areas and grass cover in paddy. Conversion to paddy mostly had species- and community-level impacts, that is, lowered species occurrence of certain species, lowered species richness, and more nested communities, whereas conversion to orchards mostly had species-level impacts, that is, lowered species occurrence, highlighting that different forms of agriculture have varying impacts on amphibians that can be determined by examining community- and species-level effects simultaneously. Using only community- or species-level metrics would not have unraveled these impacts completely. We show that large rock pools are critical microhabitats for frogs, most likely serving as refugia and protecting frogs from desiccation during dry spells in monsoons. Since Indian lateritic plateau habitats in low elevations are rapidly being converted to orchards, efforts are needed to conserve them in partnership with local communities, the custodians of these habitats.