Landscape heterogeneity can partially offset negative effects of habitat loss on mammalian biodiversity in agroecosystems

Intensive, large-scale agriculture promotes the conversion of natural habitats and diversified crops into monocultures, decreasing both native vegetation cover and landscape heterogeneity, leading to landscape simplification. Yet, a key knowledge gap persists on the relative impacts of the loss of native vegetation and landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity. Addressing this gap is pressing to support policies that conciliate agricultural production and biodiversity conservation and to move forward some scientific controversies, as the “land sharing versus land sparing” and “habitat loss versus fragmentation” debates.Through a hierarchical sampling design that maximized variation, while minimizing correlation, between landscape heterogeneity and native vegetation cover, we recorded the occurrence of medium and large-bodied mammals in native vegetation and agricultural areas of 55 landscapes in a global conservation hotspot and a key commodity production area – the Brazilian savanna, Cer...