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Habitat niches of bird species along a recovery gradient in the Chocó tropical forest

Title data

Falconí-López, Ana ; Mitesser, Oliver ; Schaefer, H. Martin ; Blüthgen, Nico ; Busse, Annika ; Feldhaar, Heike ; Freile, Juan ; Gelis, Rudy ; Grella, Nina ; Heibl, Christoph ; Kortmann, Mareike ; Newell, Felicity L. ; Rabl, Dominik ; Schleuning, Matthias ; Seibold, Sebastian ; Şekercioğlu, Çağan H. ; Tinoco, Boris A. ; Tremlett, Constance J. ; Müller, Jörg ; Donoso, David A.:
Habitat niches of bird species along a recovery gradient in the Chocó tropical forest.
In: Ecological Indicators. Vol. 166 (2024) . - 112260.
ISSN 1470-160x
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.112260

Project information

Project title:
Project's official title
Project's id
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) funded Research Unit REASSEMBLY: FOR 5207; Reassembly of species interaction networks; resistance, resilience and functional recovery of a rainforest ecosystem; sub-project SP7, with grants FE631/13-1 and MU3621/10-1
No information

Project financing: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

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Abstract in another language

Conservation programs need improved tools to measure the recovery of animal diversity across restoration gradients. We used soundscapes and expert identifications of bird species to calculate niche position (i.e., mean of environmental conditions across all areas a species occupies) and niche breadth (i.e., the standard deviation of the species distribution) along a recovery gradient; from agriculture to early (up to 20 yrs) and late (up to 38 yrs) recovery, to old-growth forests. Our survey included 323 bird species and was conducted in 66 plots in the lowland Chocoan tropical rainforest in Ecuador where less than 11% of the forest remains intact, and large areas are currently undergoing regeneration post-abandonment. First, we validated our niche metrics by contrasting them against independent global categories of forest density dependency. We then explained the niche metrics of the bird species with different ecological traits, gathered from the literature, reflecting species-specific primary diet, morphology and distribution, and accounting for the phylogenetic relatedness of species. Finally, we explored the phylogenetic signal present in bird species’ ecological traits and recovery niche metrics. Niche position and breadth across the recovery gradient closely followed global categories of forest density dependency. However, our approach provided a more fine-scaled sorting of bird species in forest plots categorized as late recovery and old-growth. Granivorous birds occupied niche positions in active cacao and pasture plots and were replaced by frugivorous birds in older regeneration plots. Along the recovery gradient, tail length and handwing index decreased with niche position, supporting previous observations that birds in old-growth forests are less mobile. Birds in old-growth forests had smaller global distribution ranges than birds in agricultural plots. Finally, the latitudinal distribution of birds in the study area averaged south of the equator, with birds in old-growth plots averaging latitudinal centroids in wet forests north of the equator, whereas birds in agriculture plots averaged latitudinal centroids further south of the country, towards the dry and open Tumbesian forest. Frugivores, invertivores and vertivores had broader niche breadths, but these decreased (marginally) with tail length. We suggest these recovery niche metrics as a potentially powerful tool for the rapid assessment of the recovery process, which might support conservation strategies such as biodiversity credits, compensation payments, and strategic land purchases. With the increasing availability of information-intensive models for bird species identification, such as deep learning artificial intelligence, our new niche metrics open the avenue for rapid assessment of tropical biodiversity and new conservation areas at larger scales.

Further data

Item Type: Article in a journal
Refereed: Yes
Keywords: Conservation; Canandé; Chronosequence; Niche Position; Niche Breadth; Ornithology; Restoration; Tropical Biology
Institutions of the University: Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences > Department of Biology > Chair Animal Ecology I
Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences > Department of Biology > Professor Animal Population Ecology > Professor Animal Population Ecology - Univ.-Prof. Dr. Heike Feldhaar
Result of work at the UBT: Yes
DDC Subjects: 500 Science > 500 Natural sciences
500 Science > 570 Life sciences, biology
500 Science > 590 Animals (Zoology)
Date Deposited: 25 Oct 2024 06:07
Last Modified: 25 Oct 2024 06:07
URI: https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/90840