Understanding the importance of small patches of habitat for conservation

摘要: Conservation activities in fragmented landscapes have largely focused on keeping remaining large patches intact, often disregarding the increasingly important role of smaller conservation vegetation. As habitat loss proceeds landscapes, there is an increasing need to measure relative contribution all (large and small) overall ecosystem persistence, a way that helps deliver effective strategies aimed at preventing death ecosystems by thousand cuts. Using Australian vegetation communities as case study, we calculated historical change below different sized thresholds extent. We introduced new patch assessment metric based Gini coefficient indicates how unequal distribution sizes distributions. At least 22% major Australia >50% their extent <1000 ha. Loss does not always match fragmentation status: though some are exposed double jeopardy high fragmentation, others far more affected than For communities, actions protecting critical but for many others, managing small crucial community persistence. Synthesis applications. Arbitrary size permitting native clearing dangerous whose now restricted patches. recommend be scaled reflect fact dominated others. With renewed focus formally assessing threat status well species, accounts such those demonstrated this study first step reliably vulnerability. Measures vulnerability only consider likely ineffective impact assessment, planning loss. Journal Applied Ecology