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Landscape composition is the strongest determinant of bird occupancy patterns in tropical forest patches

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Abstract

Context

Biodiversity in tropical region has declined in the last decades, mainly due to forest conversion into agricultural areas. Consequently, species occupancy in these landscapes is strongly governed by environmental changes acting at multiple spatial scales.

Objectives

We investigated which environmental predictors best determines the occupancy probability of 68 bird species exhibiting different ecological traits in forest patches.

Methods.

We conducted point-count bird surveys in 40 forest sites of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Using six variables related to landscape composition and configuration and local vegetation structure, we predicted the occupancy probability of each species accounting for imperfect detections.

Results

Landscape composition, especially forest cover, best predicted bird occupancy probability. Specifically, most bird species showed greater occupancy probability in sites inserted in more forested landscapes, while some species presented higher occurrence in patches surrounded by low-quality matrices. Conversely, only three species showed greater occupancy in landscapes with higher number of patches and dominated by forest edges. Also, several species exhibited greater occupancy in sites harbouring either larger trees or lower number of understory plants. Of uttermost importance, our study revealed that a minimum of 54% of forest cover is required to ensure high (> 60%) occupancy probability of forest species.

Conclusions

We highlighted that maintaining only 20% of native vegetation in private property according to Brazilian environmental law is insufficient to guarantee a greater occupancy for most bird species. We recommend that policy actions should safeguard existing forest remnants, expand restoration projects, and curb human-induced disturbances to minimise degradation within forest patches.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the reviewer and editor for all the suggestions and improvements on the manuscript. We thank several members of the Applied Ecology & Conservation lab for their help in the field work; local landowners for allowing us to work in their properties. We thank the financial support provided by Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC/PROPP; 00220-1100.1039 and 00220-1100.1171), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia (FAPESB, CNV0028/2011) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Técnológico (CNPq; 69014416); the later also granted a fellowship to DF (CNPq: 307990/2018-4). This is the publication number 36 of the REDE SISBIOTA (CNPq 563216/2010-7).

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  1. José Carlos Morante-Filho and Maíra Benchimol contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Conservation Ecology Lab, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Conservação da Biodiversidade, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Rodovia Ilhéus-Itabuna, km 16, Salobrinho, Ilhéus, Bahia, 45662-000, Brazil

    José Carlos Morante-Filho, Maíra Benchimol & Deborah Faria

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  1. José Carlos Morante-Filho
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  2. Maíra Benchimol
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Correspondence to José Carlos Morante-Filho.

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Morante-Filho, J.C., Benchimol, M. & Faria, D. Landscape composition is the strongest determinant of bird occupancy patterns in tropical forest patches. Landscape Ecol 36, 105–117 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01121-6

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