Luís Reino, Pedro Beja, Miguel B. Araújo, Stéphane Dray, Pedro Segurado

Although the negative effects of habitat fragmentation have been widely documented at the landscape scale, much less is known about its impacts on species distributions at the biogeographical scale. We hypothesize that fragmentation influences the large-scale distribution of area- and edge-sensitive species by limiting their occurrence in regions with fragmented habitats, despite otherwise favourable environmental conditions. We test this hypothesis by assessing the interplay of climate and landscape factors influencing the distribution of the calandra lark, a grassland specialist that is highly sensitive to habitat fragmentation.