One of the primary threats to biodiversity in our times is habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation occurs when a continuous habitat is divided into two or more fragments which results both in a reduction in the total amount of area, as well as in changes to the habitat's spatial configuration. Both processes can have devastating effects on animal populations. Consequently, there is a huge amount of research nowadays on habitat fragmentation and its inverse – habitat connectivity (a recent review estimated that over 15% of ecological papers between the years 2000-2016 have dealt with these issues).
When we think about fragmentation, we think about the landscape being altered (for example, a new road that dissects an area or a new development project that breaks a once intact forest patch). This focus on landscape feature is apparent in both scientific papers and conservation mitigation strategies. However, while there is no doubt that landscape features play a key role in fragmenting populations or enhancing connectivity, fragmentation may also come about owing to processes not directly linked to the landscape.
In a (pretty) recent publication in the journal Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, Oded, together with David Saltz from The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology in Ben-Gurion University, raise the issue of Landscape-Independent Fragmentation (LIF) and discuss three major classes of LIF processes and their relevance for the conservation and management of species and habitats: (1) Interspecific Dispersal Dependency, in which populations of species that rely on other species for transport and propagation become fragmented as the transporting species declines. (2) Interspecific Avoidance Induction, where species are excluded from habitats and corridors due to interspecific interactions resulting from human-induced changes in community structure (for example, exclusions by increased predation pressure). (3) Intraspecific Behavioral Divergence, where populations become segregated due to human-induced behavioral differentiation among them.
The full paper can be found here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2018.0049
