Abstract
Disturbed forests are increasingly common in tropical regions. Although the conservation value of these habitats has been highlighted, few studies have considered their potential in retaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, in this study, we address how different levels of disturbance in Araucaria forests affect bird functional diversity. We used Rapid Ecological Assessment as a method to determine a disturbance gradient in Araucaria forest sites and evaluated how biotic integrity of vegetation was associated with alpha functional diversity (functional richness and functional dispersion). We recorded a total of 112 bird species in the eight Araucaria forest sites. Biotic integrity of vegetation ranged from 33.3 to 51.3. No association was found between functional richness and biotic integrity of vegetation. However, we found a negative association between biotic integrity of vegetation and functional dispersion, which indicates that bird communities in less disturbed forests sites are more functionally redundant than those communities in highly disturbed habitats. Overall, the studied disturbed Araucaria forest sites have great biodiversity value and should be considered in conservation strategies to guarantee bird taxonomic and functional diversity.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank IAP (474.13 2013) and ICMBio (37629-1 2012) and all the private land owners for the research permits. Also, we thank B. de A. Almeida for analytical suggestions.
Funding
This study was supported by Fundação Grupo Boticário (FB: A0003_2012). The grant consisted in financial support for field expenses and equipment to be used in the field. We were also supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico that provided a fellowship to LA (CNPq: 308523/2021-0). Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES – Finance code 001) also provided fellowships to LCC, HRM for the development of their masters, and to GMB for her Ph.D.
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Calsavara, L.C., Lima, M.R., Bochio, G.M. et al. Bird communities are more functionally redundant in less disturbed Araucaria forest. Ornithol. Res. 32, 70–77 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43388-023-00142-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43388-023-00142-4