Resilience and stability in bird guilds across tropical countryside

Abstract

The consequences of biodiversity decline in intensified agricultural landscapes hinge on surviving biotic assemblages. Maintaining crucial ecosystem processes and services requires resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. However, the resilience and stability of surviving biological communities remain poorly quantified. From a 10-y dataset comprising 2,880 bird censuses across a land-use gradient, we present three key findings concerning the resilience and stability of Costa Rican bird communities. First, seed dispersing, insect eating, and pollinating guilds were more resilient to low-intensity land use than high-intensity land use. Compared with forest assemblages, bird abundance, species richness, and diversity were all ∼15% lower in low-intensity land use and ∼50% lower in high-intensity land use. Second, patterns in species richness generally correlated with patterns in stability: guilds exhibited less variation in abundance in low-intensity land use than in high-intensity land use. Finally, interspecific differences in reaction to environmental change (response diversity) and possibly the portfolio effect, but not negative covariance of species abundances, conferred resilience and stability. These findings point to the changes needed in agricultural production practices in the tropics to better sustain bird communities and, possibly, the functional and service roles that they play.

Loss of avian phylogenetic diversity in neotropical agricultural systems

“…In comparison to forest, agricultural habitats are less stable (26) and more regularly disturbed (e.g., pruned, harvested, and replanted). These attributes could preclude sustained competition (27) and favor related species with traits that allow them to persist in agriculture's novel and variable conditions (Fig.…”

“…S1 to S3 Tables S1 to S6 References (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27) Habitat conversion is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, yet little is known about how it is restructuring the tree of life by favoring some lineages over others. We combined a complete avian phylogeny with 12 years of Costa Rican bird surveys (118,127 detections across 487 species) sampled in three land uses: forest reserves, diversified agricultural systems, and intensive monocultures.…”

Biodiversity and Resilience of Ecosystem Functions

“…89 There has been much semantic and theoretical treatment of the resilience concept, but 90 here we are concerned with identifying metrics for real world applications. An ecological 91 system can be defined by the species composition at any point in time [26] and there is a 92 rich ecological literature, both theoretical and experimental, that focusses on the stability of 93 communities [16,[27][28][29] with potential relevance to resilience. Of course, the species in a 94 community are essential to the provision of many ecosystem functions which are the 95 biological foundation of ecosystem services [3].…”

Agricultural landscapes as habitat for birds in central Chile

“…For example, Verhulst et al [10] found that intensive conventional management of vineyards (high input of external agrochemicals) significantly decreased bird richness, compared with an abandoned vineyard. A long-term study in Costa Rica showed that low intensity management in agroecosystems (e.g., polycultures with high structural diversity) can provide higher resilience and stability of the bird community than high intensity agricultural management [11]. Moorcroft et al [12] found that the abundance of some granivorous species of conservation concern were associated with high amounts of weed seed and a larger proportion of bare soil.…”