Silent changes in functionally stable bird communities of a large protected tropical forest monitored over 10 years

Oliveira, Helon Simôes; Anjos, Luiz dos

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109407

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…In summary, our results agree with previous work that disturbed forests can host a substantial, but lesser degree of avian functional diversity when compared to primary forest (Bregman et al, 2016; Gómez et al, 2020; Oliveira & dos Anjos, 2022). In addition, denser vegetation in the understory and subcanopy are important predictors of species richness and functional diversity, which if incorporated in future forest restoration projects could facilitate the rapid return of functionally diverse avian species in tropical habitats.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Our results agree with previous work which suggests that naturally regenerating secondary forests demonstrate impressive flexibility by recovering a diminished, yet substantial subset of avian biodiversity and functional diversity (Bregman et al, 2016;Lennox et al, 2018). These results are consistent with a larger body of work that demonstrates that overall functional trait space can be resilient in the face of declines in species richness (Bregman et al, 2016, Oliveira et al, 2020, Oliveira & dos Anjos, 2022. However, we acknowledge that this study only focuses on the functional diversity of a subset of bird species, those that participate in mixed-species flocks, and does not account for the overall functional diversity of the forest to which all its inhabitants contribute.…”

Section: Speciessupporting

confidence: 92%

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Forest structure predicts species richness and functional diversity in Amazonian mixed‐species bird flocks

et al. 2023

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Secondary forest has the potential to act as an important habitat for biodiversity and restoring ecological benefits. Functional diversity, which includes morphological and behavioral traits that mediate species interactions with the surrounding environment, relates to the resilience of ecosystems. To assess the relationship between habitat structural differences in primary and secondary forest and the resultant differences in functional diversity of avian species, we followed 11 mixed‐species flocks at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, near Manaus, Brazil. We used remote sensing LiDAR to assess which three‐dimensional forest structural features are most closely associated with variation in species richness and functional diversity in secondary and primary tropical forest flocks. The species richness of flocks in primary forest increased in areas with higher elevation and higher leaf area density in the understory and subcanopy but was not correlated with habitat structure in secondary forest. Functional diversity increased at lower elevations and with a denser subcanopy in both primary forest and secondary forest but only increased with greater understory leaf area density in primary forest. Together, these results indicate that a dense subcanopy and understory can be important for mixed‐species flocks and that flock richness and functional diversity can be predicted by vegetation structure. Abstract in Portuguese is available with online material.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Speciessupporting

confidence: 92%

Forest structure predicts species richness and functional diversity in Amazonian mixed‐species bird flocks

et al. 2023

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, degraded ecosystems such as those near urban environments displayed the greatest reduction in functional diversity [14], and species-rich coral reefs showed greater functional diversity and redundancy compared to ecosystems that were more degraded with fewer species [58]. Together, these global reductions in functional diversity are predicted to cause substantial losses to ecosystem functionality in oceanic, Mediterranean and tropical forest ecosystems [14,15,58,59]. Similar functional traits between different species lead to functional redundancy [60], and communities with greater functional redundancy exhibit greater ecological resilience [60,61], as suggested by the diversity-stability hypothesis.…”

Section: (C) Functional Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term changes in avian biomass and functional diversity within disturbed and undisturbed Amazonian rainforest

et al. 2022

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Recent long-term studies in protected areas have revealed the loss of biodiversity, yet the ramifications for ecosystem health and resilience remain unknown. Here, we investigate how the loss of understory birds, in the lowest stratum of the forest, affects avian biomass and functional diversity in the Amazon rainforest. Across approximately 30 years in the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, we used a historical baseline of avian communities to contrast the avian communities in today's primary forest with those in modern disturbed habitat. We found that in primary rainforest, the reduced abundance of insectivorous species led to reduced functional diversity, but no reduction of biomass, indicating that species with similar functional traits are less likely to coexist in modern primary forests. Because today's forests contain fewer functionally redundant species—those with similar traits—we argue that avian communities in modern primary Amazonian rainforests are less resilient, which may ultimately disrupt the ecosystem in dynamic and unforeseen ways.

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“…The overall change in bird populations is likely to be the result of recent and historic anthropogenic disturbances at both local (Laurance 2008) as well as global or regional changes in climate (Sherry 2021, Lees et al 2022). Studies that fail to detect population declines nevertheless reveal some form of compensatory buffering: generalist birds make up for declining specialists (Bowler et al 2019), taxonomic redundancy buffers against the erosion of functional diversity (Oliveira & dos Anjos 2022), and even within a species, birds adapt (Jirinec et al 2021) or acclimatize (Martin & Mouton 2020) to increasing stress from changing land-use and climate. Current understanding of such synergistic climate and land-use effects on bird communities (Srinivasan & Wilcove 2021) is constrained by sparse long-term data (Robinson & Curtis 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest bird decline and community change over 19 years in long-isolated South Asian tropical rainforest fragments

Surendra¹,

Raman²

2022

Preprint

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Recent evidence of forest bird declines worldwide is attributed to climate change and its interactive effects with recent landuse changes such as forest loss and fragmentation, and avian life-history traits. In Asian tropical forests, such effects are poorly understood as longterm data are lacking from fragments that are long isolated rather than recently fragmented. Here, we use data from ~2000 point counts from bird surveys carried out between 2000 to 2005 and 2019 in 19 long isolated (~80 y) South Asian tropical rainforest fragments to examine changes in bird species richness, density, and composition in relation to fragment area (0.7 to 4310 ha), habitat structure, and time. Over the 19 y timespan, despite stable fragment areas, we uncovered a 29% decline in rainforest bird density and 7% decline in individual-rarefied species richness of rainforest birds, while density and richness of open-country birds remained stable. With increasing fragment area, rainforest bird species richness (jackknife estimate) increased, while open country bird richness (individual-rarefied) and density decreased. Larger fragments housed more compositionally stable bird communities, while poorer habitat was associated with lower diversity of rainforest birds but higher diversity, density, and compositional variation of open-country birds. Threshold analysis however indicated relatively small area thresholds (~20 ha) for rainforest bird species abundance. Besides identifying alarming declines in rainforest birds, the study confirms some but not all predictions for bird diversity in long-isolated forest fragments with stable forest-matrix boundaries, indicating that small fragments and habitat quality also matter.

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Silent changes in functionally stable bird communities of a large protected tropical forest monitored over 10 years

Cited by 14 publications

References 80 publications

Forest structure predicts species richness and functional diversity in Amazonian mixed‐species bird flocks

Forest structure predicts species richness and functional diversity in Amazonian mixed‐species bird flocks

Long-term changes in avian biomass and functional diversity within disturbed and undisturbed Amazonian rainforest

Forest bird decline and community change over 19 years in long-isolated South Asian tropical rainforest fragments

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