Abstract
Although most bird species avoid agricultural areas, nearly a third of all birds regularly to occasionally use such habitats, often providing important ecosystem services like pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Combining literature review with large-scale analyses of the ecological characteristics of the world’s birds, I compared tropical bird species that prefer forests, agricultural areas or both, with respect to body mass, diet, range and population size, frequency, conservation status, habitat and resource specialization. Compared to primary forests, species richness of large frugivorous and insectivorous birds (especially terrestrial and understorey species) often declines in agroforests. In contrast, nectarivores, small-to-medium insectivores (especially migrants and canopy species), omnivores, and sometimes granivores and small frugivores do better, frequently by tracking seasonal resources. However, changes in guild species numbers do not necessarily translate to changes in relative abundance, biomass or function, and more studies are needed to quantify these important measures. These findings indicate that the replacement of forests and agroforests with simplified agricultural systems can result in shifts towards less specialized bird communities with altered proportions of functional groups. These shifts can reduce avian ecosystem function and affect the ecosystem services provided by birds in agroforests and other agricultural landscapes.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Sherron Bullens, Debbie Fisher, David Hayes, Beth Karpas, and especially Kathleen McMullen for their dedicated help with the world bird ecology database. I thank Jason Socci for his help with the figures. I thank Chris Elphick and Mark Wittingham for inviting me to the International Ornithological Congress symposium that led to this paper. I thank the University of Utah for supporting this research.
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Communicated by Cristina Miyaki.
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Sekercioglu, C.H. Bird functional diversity and ecosystem services in tropical forests, agroforests and agricultural areas. J Ornithol 153 (Suppl 1), 153–161 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-012-0869-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-012-0869-4