Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-04733-2
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Sustainable Forest Management Network, Forest Renewal British Columbia
- Forest Investment Account Forest Sciences Program of British Columbia, the Ministry of the Environment of Chile [FPA 9-I-009-12]
- Peregrine Fund
- Vicerrectoria de Investigacion from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile [PUC1566-MINEDUC]
- NETBIOAMERICAS CONICYT/Apoyo a la Formacion de Redes Internacionales entre Centros de Investigacion [REDES150047]
- CONICYT/FONDECYT de Inicio [11160932]
- Environment & Climate Change Canada
- Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation [14397-2]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Logging often reduces taxonomic diversity in forest communities, but little is known about how this biodiversity loss affects the resilience of ecosystem functions. We examined how partial logging and clearcutting of temperate forests influenced functional diversity of birds that nest in tree cavities. We used point-counts in a before-after-control-impact design to examine the effects of logging on the value, range, and density of functional traits in bird communities in Canada (21 species) and Chile (16 species). Clearcutting, but not partial logging, reduced diversity in both systems. The effect was much more pronounced in Chile, where logging operations removed critical nesting resources (large decaying trees), than in Canada, where decaying aspen Populus tremuloides were retained on site. In Chile, logging was accompanied by declines in species richness, functional richness (amount of functional niche occupied by species), community-weighted body mass (average mass, weighted by species densities), and functional divergence (degree of maximization of divergence in occupied functional niche). In Canada, clearcutting did not affect species richness but nevertheless reduced functional richness and community-weighted body mass. Although some cavity-nesting birds can persist under intensive logging operations, their ecosystem functions may be severely compromised unless future nest trees can be retained on logged sites.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available