Predicting local extinctions of Amazonian vertebrates in forest islands created by a mega dam

Benchimol, Maíra; Peres, Carlos A.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.04.005

Cited by 153 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…In addition to forest clearing in the Amazon, land flooding for hydro‐electric projects is expected to cause permanent habitat losses of 10 million ha, or 2% of the Amazon region (Fearnside ). We identified that river island roost sites are important habitat for purple martins, but these very habitats are under direct threat of planned hydroelectric development, where already flooded locations have led to local extinctions of both terrestrial and arboreal fauna (Benchimol and Peres ). There is growing evidence that the Amazon Basin provides important overwintering habitat for other Nearctic‐Neotropical migrants (Heckscher et al ), including species that use vegetated islands (Diniz et al ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining fine‐scale migratory connectivity and habitat selection for a migratory songbird by using new GPS technology

Fraser

Shave

Savage

et al. 2017

Journal of Avian Biology

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Migratory aerial insectivores are among the fastest declining avian groups, but our understanding of these trends has been limited by poor knowledge of migratory connectivity and the identification of critical habitat across the vast distances they travel annually. Using new, archival GPS loggers, we tracked individual purple martins Progne subis from breeding colonies across North America to determine precise (< > 10 m) locations of migratory and overwintering roost locations in South America and to test hypotheses for fine‐scale migratory connectivity and habitat use. We discovered weak migratory connectivity at the roost scale, and extensive, fine‐scale mixing of birds in the Amazon from distant (> 2000 km) breeding sites, with some individuals sharing the same roosting trees. Despite vast tracts of contiguous forest in this region, birds occupied a much more limited habitat, with most (56%) roosts occurring on small habitat islands that were strongly associated with water. Only 17% of these roosts were in current protected areas. These data reflect a critical advance in our ability to remotely determine precise migratory connectivity and habitat selection across vast spatial scales, enhancing our understanding of population dynamics and enabling more effective conservation of species at risk.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining fine‐scale migratory connectivity and habitat selection for a migratory songbird by using new GPS technology

Fraser

Shave

Savage

et al. 2017

Journal of Avian Biology

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“…First, the archipelago and the adjacent mainland belong to the same mountain system, and thus have similar vegetation composition (Wang and Feng, 2009). Second, the habitat composition on the study islands are similar to those on unfragmented mainland control sites , which largely represent pre-fragmentation conditions (Meyer et al, 2008;Benchimol and Peres, 2015). Finally, except for several large islands, all the small islands had very limited variation in habitats and elevations (Tables A1, A3), probably due to the relatively small scale (573 km 2 ) of our study system.…”

Section: Influence Of Species Traits On Fragmentation Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Other ecological traits such as population fluctuation, annual survival rates, home range size, social flocking propensity, edge or disturbance sensitivity, have also been proposed as potential predictors of fragmentation vulnerability in other systems (Pimm et al, 1988;Henle et al, 2004;Van Houtan et al, 2006;Meyer et al, 2008;Benchimol and Peres, 2015). The role of these traits in determining fragmentation vulnerability cannot be excluded from the present study.…”

Section: Influence Of Species Traits On Fragmentation Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 91%

Ecological correlates of vulnerability to fragmentation in forest birds on inundated subtropical land-bridge islands

Wang

Thornton

et al. 2015

Biological Conservation

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“…For example, communities on islands created by anthropogenic activities may be largely shaped by local extinctions, with smaller islands exhibiting the highest extinction rates (Laurance et al . ; Benchimol & Peres ), and isolated faunas relax to lower numbers of species, resulting in biodiversity declines (Gibson et al . ; Si et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional and phylogenetic structure of island bird communities

Cadotte

Zeng

et al. 2017

Journal of Animal Ecology

118

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Biodiversity change in anthropogenically transformed habitats is often nonrandom, yet the nature and importance of the different mechanisms shaping community structure are unclear. Here, we extend the classic Theory of Island Biogeography (TIB) to account for nonrandom processes by incorporating species traits and phylogenetic relationships into a study of faunal relaxation following habitat loss and fragmentation. Two possible mechanisms can create nonrandom community patterns on fragment islands. First, small and isolated islands might consist of similar or closely related species because they are environmentally homogeneous or select for certain shared traits, such as dispersal ability. Alternatively, communities on small islands might contain more dissimilar or distantly related species than on large islands because limited space and resource availability result in greater competitive exclusion among species with high niche overlap. Breeding birds were surveyed on 36 islands and two mainland sites annually from 2010 to 2014 in the Thousand Island Lake region, China. We assessed community structure of breeding birds on these subtropical land-bridge islands by integrating species' trait and evolutionary distances. We additionally analysed habitat heterogeneity and variance in size ratios to distinguish biotic and abiotic processes of community assembly. Results showed that functional-phylogenetic diversity increased with island area, and decreased with isolation. Bird communities on the mainland were more diverse and generally less clustered than island bird communities and not different than randomly assembled communities. Bird communities on islands tend to be functionally similar and phylogenetically clustered, especially on small and isolated islands. The nonrandom decline in species diversity and change in bird community structure with island area and isolation, along with the relatively homogeneous habitats on small islands, support the environmental filtering hypothesis. Our study demonstrates the importance of integrating multiple forms of diversity for understanding the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, and further reveals that TIB could be extended to community measures by moving beyond assumptions of species equivalency in colonisation rates and extinction susceptibilities.

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Predicting local extinctions of Amazonian vertebrates in forest islands created by a mega dam

Cited by 153 publications

References 60 publications

Determining fine‐scale migratory connectivity and habitat selection for a migratory songbird by using new GPS technology

Determining fine‐scale migratory connectivity and habitat selection for a migratory songbird by using new GPS technology

Ecological correlates of vulnerability to fragmentation in forest birds on inundated subtropical land-bridge islands

Functional and phylogenetic structure of island bird communities

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