The effects of streets on biodiversity is an important aspect of urban ecology, but it has been neglected worldwide. Several vegetation attributes (e.g. street tree density and diversity) have important effects on biodiversity and ecological processes. In this study, we evaluated the influences of urban vegetation—represented by characteristics of street trees (canopy size, proportion of native tree species and tree species richness)—and characteristics of the landscape (distance to parks and vegetation quantity), and human impacts (human population size and exposure to noise) on taxonomic data and functional diversity indices of the bird community inhabiting streets. The study area was the southern region of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil), a largely urbanized city in the understudied Neotropical region. Bird data were collected on 60 point count locations distributed across the streets of the landscape. We used a series of competing GLM models (using Akaike's information criterion for small sample sizes) to assess the relative contribution of the different sets of variables to explain the observed patterns. Seventy-three bird species were observed exploiting the streets: native species were the most abundant and frequent throughout this landscape. The bird community's functional richness and Rao's Quadratic Entropy presented values lower than 0.5. Therefore, this landscape was favoring few functional traits. Exposure to noise was the most limiting factor for this bird community. However, the average size of arboreal patches and, especially the characteristics of street trees, were able to reduce the negative effects of noise on the bird community. These results show the importance of adequately planning the urban afforestation process: increasing tree species richness, preserving large trees and planting more native trees species in the streets are management practices that will increase bird species richness, abundance and community functional aspects and consequently improve human wellbeing and quality of life.

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Among different approaches to exploring and describing the ecological complexity of natural environments, soundscape analyses have recently provided useful proxies for understanding and interpreting dynamic patterns and processes in a landscape. Nevertheless, the study of soundscapes remains a new field with no internationally accepted protocols. This work provides the first guidelines for monitoring soundscapes in three different tropical areas, specifically located in the Atlantic Forest, Rupestrian fields, and the Cerrado (Brazil). Each area was investigated using three autonomous devices recording for six entire days during a period of 15 days in both the wet and dry seasons. The recordings were processed via a specific acoustic index and successively subsampled in different ways to determine the degree of information loss when reducing the number of minutes of recording used in the analyses. We describe for the first time the temporal and spectral soundscape features of three tropical environments. We test diverse programming routines to describe the costs and the benefits of different sampling designs, considering the pressing issue of storing and analyzing extensive data sets generated by passive acoustic monitoring. Schedule 5 (recording one minute of every five) appeared to retain most of the information contained in the continuous recordings from all the study areas. Less dense recording schedules produced a similar level of information only in specific portions of the day. Substantial sampling protocols such as those presented here will be useful to researchers and wildlife managers, as they will reduce time-and resource-consuming analyses, whilst still achieving reliable results.

The Cerrado is now considered the most threatened biome of South America. Northwestern Minas Gerais state, in southeastern Brazil, still harbors large areas of extreme importance for biological conservation of the Cerrado. The current study provides the first thorough assessment of the avifauna of a large remnant of Cerrado vegetation in this region, the Fazenda Brejão. Data are based on a bird survey conducted from November 1998 to January 2007. This area is a private property of 20.000 ha preserved that lies in a region recognized for its palm groves, a pristine Cerrado (savannah-like vegetation) and gallery forests. Bird censuses were carried out through random transects censuses, mist-net captures and recording bird vocalizations. It was recorded 273 species, belonging to 56 families. This represents 32% of all 857 bird species recorded for the Cerrado. Palm groves held approximately 42% of all recorded species. We also recorded endemic species of Cerrado as well as adjacent biomes such as the Atlantic Forest and the Caatinga. Regional threatened species were also recorded such as the Greater Rhea Rhea americana, the Chestnut-bellied Guan Penelope ochrogaster, the Bare-faced Curassow Crax fasciolata, the Black-and-white Hawk-eagle Spizastur melanoleucus, the Blue-and-yellow Macaw Ara ararauna, the Yellow-faced Parrot Alipiopsitta xanthops and the Minas Gerais Tyrannulet Phylloscartes roquettei. This species diversity reveals the biological importance of the region. The establishment of a natural reserve in the region will be an essential measure to guarantee the biological conservation of one of the best preserved areas of Cerrado to date in southeastern Brazil.