Land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter bird community assembly

Anthropogenic activities have reshaped biodiversity on islands worldwide. However, it remains unclear how island attributes and land-use change interactively shape multiple facets of island biodiversity through community assembly processes. To answer this, we conducted bird surveys in various land-use types (mainly forest and farmland) using transects on 34 oceanic land-bridge islands in the largest archipelago of China. We found that bird species richness increased with island area and decreased with isolation, regardless of the intensity of land-use change. However, forest-dominated habitats exhibited lower richness than farmland-dominated habitats. Island bird assemblages generally comprised species that share more similar traits or evolutionary histories (i.e. functional and/or phylogenetic clustering) than expected if assemblages were randomly assembled. Contrary to our expectations, we observed that bird assemblages in forest-dominated habitats were more clustered on large and close islands, whereas assemblages in farmland-dominated habitats were more clustered on small islands. These contrasting results indicate that land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter the community assembly of birds on inhabited islands. Our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating human-modified habitats when examining the community assembly of island biota, and further suggest that agricultural landscapes on large islands may play essential roles in protecting countryside island biodiversity.

Palavras-chave

Anthropocene Biodiversity Conservation Countryside Island Biogeography Farmland Functional Trait Oceanic Islands Zhoushan Archipelago

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.3/7092

Citação

Zhao, Y., Mendenhall, C. D., Matthews, T. J., et al. (2024). Land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter bird community assembly. "Proceedings of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences", 291, 20232245. DOI:10.1098/rspb.2023.2245

Editora

The Royal Society

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2023.2245

Coleções

GBA - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais / Articles in International Journals

Licença CC

cclicense-by

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