Avian functional responses to landscape recovery

Abstract

Restoring native vegetation in agricultural landscapes can reverse biodiversity declines via species gains. Depending on whether the traits of colonizers are complementary or redundant to the assemblage, species gains can increase the efficiency or stability of ecological functions, yet detecting these processes is not straightforward. We propose a new conceptual model to identify potential changes to complementarity and redundancy in response to landscape change via relative changes in taxonomic and functional richness. We applied our model to a 14-year study of birds across an extensive agricultural region. We found compelling evidence that high levels of landscape-scale tree cover and patch-scale restoration were significant determinants of functional change in the overall bird assemblage. This was true for every one of the six traits investigated individually, indicating increased trait-specific functional complementarity and redundancy in the assemblage. Applying our conceptual model to species diversity data provided new insights into how the return of vertebrates to restored landscapes may affect ecological function.

100+ years of bird survey data reveal changes in functional fingerprints indexing ecosystem health of a tropical montane forest through time

“…range are considered to cause substantial loss of functionality in highly diverse ocean and forest assemblages (Mcwilliam et al 2018;Newbold et al 2020;Pimiento et al 2020), and that some systems with 40% difference in tree cover, such as agriculture vs old growth forest, differ by only ~5% in the functional richness of their bird assemblages (Ikin et al 2019). Furthermore, we found that extirpated species had higher than expected values of functional uniqueness and distinctiveness, and therefore their loss was mostly responsible for the decreasing trend in functional diversity over years.…”

“…Gregory & van Strien 2010;Bregman et al 2016). Furthermore, the link between avian functional traits and ecosystem processes is well documented (Maglianesi et al 2015;Ikin et al 2019;.…”

Freshwater fish functional and taxonomic diversity above and below Niagara Falls

“…Quantifying changes in functional diversity over space and time, and the traits that support these metrics, can reveal the mechanisms underlying changing community and ecosystem dynamics. For example, functional diversity metrics have been used to understand the mechanisms leading to species extinctions (Cardinale et al 2012), to evaluate the success of management actions and inform environmental protection efforts (Ikin et al 2019), and to estimate the vulnerability of ecosystems to the effects of future disturbance (Mouillot et al 2013a). Furthermore, functional diversity metrics can be used to identify species that are functionally redundant in an ecosystem due to similar feeding, reproductive, and (or) behavioural attributes (Lamothe et al 2018), or alternatively, species that have disproportionately large roles in maintaining ecosystem function due to unique functional attributes (Mouillot et al 2014).…”

Treeline ecotones shape the distribution of avian species richness and functional diversity in south temperate mountains

“…These traits were selected because they can be directly related with spatial and temporal resource use (type and quantity) and ecosystem function across elevational gradients. Diet expresses trophic linkages in ecological networks and can be associated with environmental productivity, as well as the extent of ecological processes such as predation, seed dispersion, and pollination 54 , 55 . Foraging substrate reflects habitat associations, while nest location and type indicates breeding site selection and different species interactions (e.g.…”