Journal
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
Volume 191, Issue -, Pages 117-129Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.05.018
Keywords
Climate change; Fragmentation; Neotropics; Population decline; Understory birds
Funding
- NSF [DEB-1242588]
- Environment Canada
- School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1242588] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Tropical forest understory birds are declining globally for unknown reasons, indicating an urgent need to understand the causes. We review and synthesize studies investigating causes of these declines focusing on the Sarapiqui region of the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. We discuss evidence for five potential causes of population declines motivated by current understanding of the effects of fragmentation, disturbance of remnant forests, climate change, and their possible interactions: (1) reduced forest area increases the probability of stochastic extirpation; (2) reduced connectivity among forest patches decreases population rescue opportunities; (3) degradation of preferred microhabitats due to, for example, abundant large mammals, jeopardizes specialized birds' foraging opportunities; (4) high nest predation rates reduce productivity below replacement levels; and (5) changes in macro- and microclimate increase energetic demands and reduce survival. Our review documents how tropical forest loss and degradation likely Impact understory birds through a variety of direct, indirect, and interrelated causes spanning multiple temporal and spatial scales and levels of biological organization. We propose that the processes affecting understory birds in the Sarapiqui region may be broadly representative of threats experienced by rainforest understory birds pantropically. Effective conservation will require consideration of such diverse and interacting factors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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