Diversidad taxonómica y funcional de aves: Diferencias entre hábitats antrópicos en un bosque subtropical

Abstract

The extensive land use for human activities is one of the main threats to biodiversity. In this study, we investigate what anthropogenic habitat that best preserves the native assemblage of birds and their functional traits in a subtropical forest. We compared simultaneously the taxonomic (species richness and composition similarity) and functional (functional traits diversity and traits composition similarity) bird diversity between native forest and different anthropogenic habitats (tree plantations, urban centers, cattle pastures and crop fields) in one of the most diverse and threatened forest in the world, the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest. We surveyed birds and measured environmental variables in five anthropogenic habitat types, and selected 11 traits to estimate functional diversity. We estimated “1-Gower dissimilarity index” to explore similarities between native forest and anthropogenic habitats. We used generalized least square models to compare environmental similarity and taxonomic and functional diversity between habitat types. We performed fourth corner analysis to study functional traits associations with each anthropogenic habitat. As expected, tree plantation was the habitat that best preserved bird and functional trait assemblages of the native forest; in contrast, open habitats differed the most from the native forest with respect to taxonomic and functional diversity. Environmental similarity between anthropogenic and native habitats is a key to bird conservation and functional traits. Studying taxonomic and functional diversity in these habitats is essential to predict community responses to land use and allows to make suitable conservation decisions.