Discussion
The current heterogeneity of southern Iberian landscapes appears to have a positive correlation with mammalian diversity.
As hypothesised, our results indicate that in areas where the homogeneity of cork oak woodlands is disturbed by the presence of other landscape elements there is a significantly higher number of mammalian species, especially in those regions comprising riparian vegetation, orchards, and olive yards. The importance of riparian communities for biodiversity has previously been demonstrated by several authors, since it has been shown that these patches are disproportionately richer in species compared to surrounding habitats (e.g. Naiman et al., 2005; Matos et al., 2009).