Title：Construction Technology of Amphibian Habitat and the Evaluation of Its Effectiveness
Journal/Publisher：Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology
Year：2018
Authors：Hanbin Xie, Wei Zhang, Ben Li, Bicheng Li, Yunfei Zhang, Tianhou Wang
Abstract
Drastic decline and extinction of amphibian species occurred around the world. Human induced habitat loss and degradation are major threats to amphibians. Repairing or rebuilding amphibian habitat is an important way for amphibian restoration. During the process of urbanization, the construction of appropriate habitats is the key measure for amphibian conservation. In this study, construction technique and assessment of the reform amphibian habitat was carried out. To match the habitat requirements of five common amphibian species in Shanghai, Luhui seedling base in Pujiang Town (Minhang Distirct, Shanghai, China) was selected as an experimental site from May 2014 to September 2016. We used ecological engineering measures that could provide amphibian habitat, such as changing topographic, adjusting water systems, vegetation restoration, and so on. To explore how these new technologies benefited amphibians’ biodiversity, five sampling lines (100m ×5m) were selected and amphibians were monitored during the breeding period (May-June) and non-breeding period (August- September), once in each period in 2014 and 2016. A total of four species were recorded with a density of (164.0± 63.7 ) ind·hm-2 in the breeding period in 2014, and four species with a density of (160.0± 29.7 ) ind·hm-2 in the non-breeding period in 2014, whereas five species with a density of (560.0± 159.3 ) ind·hm-2 in the breeding period in 2016, and five species with a density of (628.0± 186.2 ) ind·hm-2 in the non-breeding period in 2016. Our results suggested that this technology could significantly increase amphibians’ biodiversity in the degraded amphibian habitat, which might be applied in other similar habitats in China.
Keywords: amphibian, habitat, ecological restoration, population restoration, Shanghai
