Bird diversity in relation to land use in agricultural landscapes of southeastern Brazil

Abstract

The Atlantic forest has been dramatically reduced in the state of São Paulo to 7% of its original area with less than 1% still considered pristine. Agricultural landscapes formed by agroecosystems and small remaining forest fragments are now widespread. The Passa- Cinco river basin can be considered as an agricultural landscape model for the Eastern-Central region of the State of São Paulo, in Southeastern Brazil, for presenting relatively well preserved native forest fragments alongside local crops (i.e., Eucalyptus and sugarcane plantations, and exotic pastures). Birds are usually considered effective indicators of environmental change. The main goal of this study was to evaluate spatial variation in bird diversity inhabiting agricultural landscapes in the State of São Paulo. We surveyed birds across 16 study sites from September 2003 to January 2005 and compared species richness and abundance by nested-ANOVA in relation to these environments. We detected 3,679 individuals belonging to 224 species (138 passerine and 86 non-passerine) in the whole study area. Native forest fragments presented the largest species richness (164) and exotic pastures had the largest abundance of individuals. Native forest fragments presented a distinct pattern compared to the other three landscape elements considering species composition and abundance in multidimensional scaling analysis. The results stress that native forest fragments should be considered crucial elements of agricultural landscapes.