Landscape and Urban Planning xxx (2004) xxx–xxx Factors influencing species diversity of ferns and fern allies in fragmented forest patches in the Kyoto city area Kentaro Murakami a,b,∗ , Hisayuki Maenaka a , Yukihiro Morimoto c a Graduate School of Agriculture and Biological Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University, 1-1 Gakuen-cho, Sakai-shi, Osaka 599-8531, Japan b Natural History Museum, Kishiwada City, 6-5 Sakai-machi, Kishiwada-shi, Osaka 596-0072, Japan c Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa Oiwake-Cho, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan Abstract We investigated the relationship between species diversity of pteridophytes and the environmental factors of 39 fragmented forest patches in the Kyoto city area. There was a significant correlation between the number of species and the micro-landform diversity, artificial habitat diversity, and logarithm of the area of the forest patch. When we performed a multiple regression analysis to identify the best-fit model so as to optimize the amount of variation in species diversity explained by using stepwise selection, three species diversity indices (species richness or Shannon’s diversity index, logarithm of inverse Simpson index) had significant positive partial correlations with the logarithm of area of the forest patch, and negative correlations with the logarithm of isolation distance from mountain forest. Therefore, we conclude that pteridophyte species diversity depends on patch size and isolation distance from mountain forests. Comparison of the woody plant species–area curve with the pteridophyte species–area curve showed that the rate of increase of species number (inclination) with area was the same, but the Y-intercept of the pteridophyte species–area curve was lower than that of the woody plant curve. Therefore, the minimum conservation area required for ferns and fern allies is greater than that for woody plant species. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Fragmented forest patches; Species–area relationship; Isolation distance; Species diversity; Pteridophyta 1. Introduction Recent ecological studies of fragmented forest patches have often been based on island biogeographic theory (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967). Various stud- ies that have applied this theory have reported that the number of plant species increases with the area of forest patches (Levenson, 1981; Peterken and Game, 1984; Dzwonko and Loster, 1988; Zacharias and Brandes, 1990; Mikk and Mander, 1995; Kamihogi, 1996; Ishida et al., 1998; Bastin and Thomas, 1999; ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-72-254-9444; fax: +81-72-254-9444. E-mail address: fern@tcn.zaq.ne.jp (K. Murakami). Hattori and Ishida, 2000; Murakami and Morimoto, 2000). However, the effects of fragmentation differ for every taxon (Forman, 1995; Natsuhara, 2000) and every landscape (Forman, 1995). Therefore, for na- ture conservation, we need to compare the patterns of the distribution of various taxa and to consider the minimum conservation area for every taxon or ways of managing forest patches. In the fragmented forest patches in the Kyoto city area, the species diversity of various taxa, including woody plants (Murakami and Morimoto, 2000), ants (Yui et al., 2001) has been investigated. Moreover, avian species, herbaceous species and mosses are investigating by different group of scientists now. We have a future plan to compare the patterns of distribution of such taxa. 0169-2046/$20.00 © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.10.019