Steppe habitats are considered to be of great interest in terms of biodiversity conservation, specially for birds, with many rare and endangered species breeding in these habitats. The conversion to crops or other forms of cultivation, is universally recognised as the major threat for the conservation of these habitats and their biodiversity. During the 20th century, particularly in the Mediterranean basin, large areas of natural steppe habitats were plowed, causing a large decline in many bird species. Nowadays, although the economical and social context has deeply changed, many areas of steppe habitats are facing the same threat. In this paper we analysed the effects of different landscape mosaics of crops and steppes on breeding birds in the Alta Murgia National Park, one of the most important steppe areas in Italy. Specifically, we tested the effect of some landscape metrics, descriptive of crops-steppes spatial arrangement, on five Alaudidae species: Calandra lark, Skylark, Greater short-toed lark, Woodlark and Crested lark. Analysis were carried out using MaxEnt. The analyses did not find substantial differences between steppe and cropland, which would seem to be equally suitable habitats for these species. With the only exception of Greater short-toed lark, which shows a degree of ecological plasticity, all other species show a strong preference for landscapes with a high degree of connectivity and low fragmentation. Our results seem to suggest that the co-presence of crops and steppes, if the fragmentation degree at landscape scale is low, does not negatively affect the presence and abundance of steppe species, and represents a highly suitable habitat that can support nationally-important populations of endangered species such as the Calandra lark.
