India hosts multiple global biodiversity hotspots while being one of the most populous countries in the world. Here, we examine how well India has protected its avifauna, based on the fraction of their ranges falling within “protected areas.” India has protected 5% of its land this way. The issue is whether India has done better than expected in protecting its threatened species. To this end, we assessed 99 Near Threatened, Threatened, and small‐ranged species by estimating their Area of Habitat (AOH). We refined published species ranges using secondary information on elevation limits and habitat preferences. More than half (52) of the species assessed have their AOH <30% of their published ranges, while 31 have <10%. India has protected 87 threatened species' AOH more than expected (>5%), and for 33 species, the proportion protected exceeds the Aichi target (>17%). When we consider the top 10% richest regions as hotspots, only 9.2% of their total area falls under India's protected area network, inadequately covering areas with most threatened birds. We also discuss the conservation concerns for grassland and open habitat species across India, since we find that substantial proportions of their AOHs fall outside protected areas. This result highlights the significance of alternative conservation models, including other effective area‐based conservation measures. We show that species' AOH provides a more realistic well‐informed range that can aid in assessing their protection status.

Climate change and habitat degradation are two of the greatest threats to tropical biodiversity today. In addition to their independent effects, habitat degradation compounds the impacts of climate change by creating habitats with novel abiotic characteristics (typically hotter, drier and more variable). Tropical species are often microhabitat and microclimate specialists occupying distinct temperature and humidity niches. How species′ abiotic niches affect their responses to the joint impacts of climate change and habitat degradation remains poorly understood, especially in terms of changes in phenotype and demographic vital rates. Using an 11-year mark-recapture dataset and temperature-humidity measurements from primary and selectively logged forest from 2000m in the Eastern Himalayas, we investigate how the abiotic (temperature-humidity) niche sizes of populations of species in primary forest and abiotic niche overlaps between populations in primary and logged forest predicted body mass and survival trends over time for populations in each habitat. Our results show that logged forest is hotter and drier than primary forest, and the arthropod community shows dramatic shifts in composition upon selective logging. In understorey insectivores, we find that body masses appear to be declining over time in logged, but not in primary forest. Further, across species, we report a positive relationship between the size of the primary forest niche and body mass trends over time in primary forest but not in logged forest. The degree of dissimilarity between species-specific primary and logged forest niches was strongly and negatively correlated with survival trends in logged forest. Here, we show that temperature-humidity niche shifts in response to anthropogenic habitat modification can impact demographic vital rates crucial for population persistence. This work has the potential to inform prompt, targeted conservation efforts toward species that are the most threatened in a warmer and more degraded world.

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Selective logging is the practice of removing a subset of commercially important trees from a forest is a globally pervasive form of forest degradation. Selective logging alters both the structure and function of forests and the composition of ecological communities. Tropical insectivorous birds are highly vulnerable to microhabitat alterations in logged forest. Such altered microhabitats might affect the foraging of forest birds by altering (a) resource availability, and (b) foraging behaviour. We investigated the effect of selective logging on microclimates, prey availability, foraging behaviour and the foraging success of eastern Himalayan birds in the breeding season. Selective logging alters temperature-humidity microclimates and the composition of arthropod communities, both of which are likely to then collectively alter foraging behaviour by birds. We show that birds spent a lower proportion of their time foraging in primary compared with logged forest. Further, selective logging interacts with species traits such as body mass, preferred foraging stratum (understorey, midstorey or canopy) and foraging manoeuvre to influence foraging success. Gleaners generally foraged more successfully in primary forest and salliers in logged forest, although these patterns were modified by body mass and foraging stratum. Synthesis and applications: Our study shows how altered microclimates in anthropogenically modified habitats can influence resource availability and have downstream impacts on the behaviour of species at higher trophic levels. Keywords: arthropod density, arthropod diversity, foraging success, forest degradation, gleaner, land-use change, microclimate, montane birds, sallier, time spent foraging, understorey insectivores