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Temporal dynamics of bird community composition: an analysis of baseline conditions from long-term data

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Numerous anthropogenic activities threaten the biodiversity found on earth. Because all ecological communities constantly experience temporal turnover due to natural processes, it is important to distinguish between change due to anthropogenic impact and the underlying natural rate of change. In this study, we used data sets on breeding bird communities that covered at least 20 consecutive years, from a variety of terrestrial ecosystems, to address two main questions. (1) How fast does the composition of bird communities change over time, and can we identify a baseline of natural change that distinguishes primeval systems from systems experiencing varying degrees of human impact? (2) How do patterns of temporal variation in composition vary among bird communities in ecosystems with different anthropogenic impacts? Time lag analysis (TLA) showed a pattern of increasing rate of temporal compositional change from large-scale primeval systems to disturbed and protected systems to distinctly successional systems. TLA slopes of <0.04 were typical for breeding bird communities with natural turnover, while communities subjected to anthropogenic impact were characterised by TLA slopes of >0.04. Most of the temporal variability of breeding bird communities was explained by slow changes occurring over decades, regardless of the intensity of human impact. In most of the time series, medium- and short-wave periodicity was not detected, with the exception of breeding bird communities subjected to periodic pulses (e.g. caterpillar outbreaks causing food resource peaks).

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Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the Vogelwerkgroep Meijendel (in particular to J.C.P. Westgeest) who placed the data from the Meijendel Dunes, The Netherlands, at our disposal, and to H. de Nie and G. Sanders for providing their data from Mastbos and Hoekelum Manor, respectively. Research on the bird community at the Hubbard Brook site was funded by grants from the US National Science Foundation and the data are available at http://www.hubbardbrook.org. We are grateful to Anders Enemar for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This is NIOO publication 5622.

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Author notes

  1. Christian Kampichler

    Present address: Sovon Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology, P.O. Box 6521, 6503 GA, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vogeltrekstation—Dutch Centre for Avian Migration and Demography, NIOO-KNAW, P.O. Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Christian Kampichler & Henk P. van der Jeugd

  2. División de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Carretera Villahermosa-Cárdenas km. 0.5 s/n, C.P. 86150, Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico

    Christian Kampichler

  3. Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7050, 750 07, Uppsala, Sweden

    David G. Angeler

  4. Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Richard T. Holmes

  5. Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian Agricultural University, Kreutzwaldi 5, 51014, Tartu, Estonia

    Aivar Leito

  6. Department of Ecology, Lund University, Ecology Building, 223 62, Lund, Sweden

    Sören Svensson

  7. Laboratory of Forest Biology, Wrocław University, Sienkiewicza 21, 50 335, Wrocław, Poland

    Tomasz Wesołowski

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  1. Christian Kampichler
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Correspondence to Christian Kampichler.

Additional information

Communicated by Ola Olsson.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Online Resource 1 Detailed description of studied systems.

Online Resource 2 Short guide to redundancy analysis (RDA) with principal coordinates of neighbourhood matrices (PCNM).

Online Resource 3 Time lag analysis results of all breeding bird communities included in the analysis, showing the Hellinger distances between all pairs of years at different time lags and the fitted regression line. See Table 2 in the main document for statistical parameters of the regression.

Online Resource 4 Results of redundancy analyses with principal coordinates of neighborhood matrices (lc score plots) of all breeding bird communities included in the analysis. See Table 2 in the main document for statistical parameters of the analysis.

Online Resource 5 Significant principal coordinates of neighborhood matrices (PCNM) for all breeding bird communities included in the analysis. The PCNM are characterised by their wavelengths, expressed in years.

Online Resource 6 Methods applied to compare TLA and RDA-PCNM results among bird communities.

Online Resource 7 RDA-PCNM biplots of all breeding bird communities included in the analysis. No RDA models could be fitted to Kraipe plot K1, Białowieża National Park plot CM, Mastbos and Gaudineer Knob. See Online Resource 2 for an explanation of how to read an RDA-PCNM biplot.

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Supplementary material 6 (PDF 355 kb)

Supplementary material 7 (PDF 334 kb)

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Kampichler, C., Angeler, D.G., Holmes, R.T. et al. Temporal dynamics of bird community composition: an analysis of baseline conditions from long-term data. Oecologia 175, 1301–1313 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-2979-6

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