Landscape composition is the strongest determinant of bird occupancy patterns in tropical forest patches
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Landscape composition is the strongest determinant of bird occupancy patterns in tropical forest patches Jose´ Carlos Morante-Filho
. Maı´ra Benchimol
. Deborah Faria
Received: 28 May 2020 / Accepted: 15 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Context Biodiversity in tropical region has declined in the last decades, mainly due to forest conversion into agricultural areas. Consequently, species occupancy in these landscapes is strongly governed by environmental changes acting at multiple spatial scales. Objectives We investigated which environmental predictors best determines the occupancy probability of 68 bird species exhibiting different ecological traits in forest patches. Methods. We conducted point-count bird surveys in 40 forest sites of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Using six variables related to landscape composition and configuration and local vegetation structure, we predicted the occupancy probability of each species accounting for imperfect detections.
Jose´ Carlos Morante-Filho and Maı´ra Benchimol contributed equally.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01121-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. C. Morante-Filho (&) M. Benchimol D. Faria Applied Conservation Ecology Lab, Programa de Po´sgraduac¸a˜o em Ecologia e Conservac¸a˜o da Biodiversidade, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Rodovia Ilhe´usItabuna, km 16, Salobrinho, Ilhe´us, Bahia 45662-000, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]
Results Landscape composition, especially forest cover, best predicted bird occupancy probability. Specifically, most bird species showed greater occupancy probability in sites inserted in more forested landscapes, while some species presented higher occurrence in patches surrounded by low-quality matrices. Conversely, only three species showed greater occupancy in landscapes with higher number of patches and dominated by forest edges. Also, several species exhibited greater occupancy in sites harbouring either larger trees or lower number of understory plants. Of uttermost importance, our study revealed that a minimum of 54% of forest cover is required to ensure high ([ 60%) occupancy probability of forest species. Conclusions We highlighted that maintaining only 20% of native vegetation in private property according to Brazilian environmental law is insufficient to guarantee a greater occupancy for most bird species. We recommend that policy actions should safeguard existing forest remnants, expand restoration projects, and curb human-induced disturbances to minimise degradation within forest patches. Keywords Atlantic forest Habitat loss Landscape composition Landscape configuration Life-history traits Neotropical birds Occupancy model
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Landscape Ecol
Introduction Tropical forests safeguard the greatest number of species on Earth, yet have been recently experiencing extensive losses in biodiversity due
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