Heating a biodiversity hotspot: connectivity is more important than remaining habitat

Context Connectivity, which is a fundamental aspect of any landscape, has been shown to have a nonlinear relationship with the amount of natural habitat, with a marked decrease at intermediate levels of coverage. Impacts on connectivity vary according to how natural habitat is removed. We analyzed connectivity in the Brazilian Cerrado (tropical savanna), a 2 million-km 2 biodiversity hotspot. Objectives We evaluated the effects of habitat removal on connectivity, hypothesizing that a deforestation threshold exists below which connectivity is drastically reduced and that neighboring landscapes have similar patterns of connectivity. Methods We divided the Cerrado into 624 50 × 50 km cells and used the integral index of connectivity (IIC), available in Conefor software, to evaluate changes in connectivity between 2000 and 2017. We analyzed how the intra, flux, and connector components of connectivity vary with changes in percentage of remaining natural habitat. Results Between 2000 and 2017, 23.9% of the natural habitat of the Cerrado was lost (~ 254,000 km 2 ) and connectivity decreased significantly (W = 179,700, p