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Contrasting spatial and temporal responses of bird communities to landscape changes

  • Global change ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Quantifying the impact of land-use changes on biodiversity is a major challenge in conservation ecology. Static spatial relationships between bird communities and agricultural landscapes have been extensively studied. Yet, their ability to mirror the effects of temporal land-use dynamics remains to be demonstrated. Here, we test whether such space-for-time substitution approaches are relevant for explaining temporal variations in farmland bird communities. We surveyed 256 bird communities in an agricultural landscape in southwest France at the same locations in 1982 and 2007, and quantified the same seven landscape descriptors for each period. We compared the effects of spatial and temporal landscape changes over this 25-year period on bird species distributions and three community-level metrics: species richness and two community indices reflecting birds’ specialisation regarding local vegetation structure (local CSI) and landscape composition (landscape CSI). Landscape heterogeneity decreased between 1982 and 2007 and crop area increased sharply at the expense of grassland as a result of agricultural intensification. We found that the correlations between temporal changes in bird distributions or community metrics and landscape components were less consistent than their spatial relationships in each year. This result advocates caution when using a space-for-time substitution approach to assess the effects of landscape changes on biodiversity. Additionally, community metrics showed contrasted responses to landscape changes. Species richness and local CSI for each period were negatively related to the area of crops and positively related to landscape heterogeneity. Conversely, the landscape CSI was positively related to the area of crop and negatively to landscape heterogeneity. To understand the ecological processes linked to changes in farm landscapes, our study underlines the need to develop long-term studies with bird and habitat data collected during several periods, and particularly to consider multiple community indices in monitoring change.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Huw ap Thomas (Axtrad) for thorough editorial advice in English. We sincerely thank Bernard Courtiade for his participation in the 1982 field campaign, and Laurent Raison, Marc Deconchat and Philippe Caniot for their participation in the 2007 field campaign. We would also like to thank Sylvie Ladet for her assistance with GIS data. We are indebted to all the farmers and municipalities in the study area for their kind cooperation. Frédéric Archaux provided insightful comments on the text. Finally, we thank Gavin Siriwardena and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. This research was supported by INRA-SAD Research Department and SB is funded through a National Research Agency grant BIODIVAGRIM (ANR-07-BDIV-002) “Conserving biodiversity in agro-ecosystems: a spatially explicit landscape modelling approach”. J.Y.B. received partial funding from the Region Centre (n°200800033784).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRA UMR1201 DYNAFOR, 31320, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Sébastien Bonthoux, Michel Goulard & Gérard Balent

  2. ENSNP, 9 rue de la Chocolaterie, C.S. 2902, 41029, Blois Cedex, France

    Sébastien Bonthoux

  3. Irstea, UR EFNO, Domaine des Barres, 45290, Nogent sur Vernisson, France

    Jean-Yves Barnagaud

  4. INRA, UMR 1202 BIOGECO, 33612, Cestas, France

    Jean-Yves Barnagaud

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  1. Sébastien Bonthoux
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Correspondence to Sébastien Bonthoux.

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Communicated by Esa Lehikoinen.

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Bonthoux, S., Barnagaud, JY., Goulard, M. et al. Contrasting spatial and temporal responses of bird communities to landscape changes. Oecologia 172, 563–574 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2498-2

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