2021
DOI: 10.1007/s10531-021-02190-y
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Bird communities in a degraded forest biodiversity hotspot of East Africa

Abstract: Tropical forests suffer severe habitat destruction. Thus, tropical forests frequently consist today of only a few small remnants that are often embedded within a matrix of agricultural fields and tree plantations. Forest specialist species have experienced severe population declines under these circumstances. We studied bird communities based on census plots set up in a near-natural forest block, as well as degraded forest patches, tree plantations, and agricultural fields, across the Taita Hills in southern K… Show more

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Cited by 7 publications
(16 citation statements)
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References 59 publications
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“…Thus, plantations of exotic eucalyptus represent only little basis for the development of most organisms (e.g. herbivorous arthropods, Zahn et al, 2009), and subsequently for other organisms at higher trophic levels, such as birds (Mulwa et al, 2021), and thus provide only little ecosystem functions (Pejchar and Mooney, 2009), as approved by our own data. Our results go in line with studies measuring the same proxies of ecosystem functions using the same techniques.…”
Section: Ecosystem Functions In Different Ecosystemsmentioning
confidence: 57%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…Thus, plantations of exotic eucalyptus represent only little basis for the development of most organisms (e.g. herbivorous arthropods, Zahn et al, 2009), and subsequently for other organisms at higher trophic levels, such as birds (Mulwa et al, 2021), and thus provide only little ecosystem functions (Pejchar and Mooney, 2009), as approved by our own data. Our results go in line with studies measuring the same proxies of ecosystem functions using the same techniques.…”
Section: Ecosystem Functions In Different Ecosystemsmentioning
confidence: 57%
“…Pre-colonial human settling started the transformation of natural cloud forest into agroecosystems for smallholder farming (Hohenthal, 2018), and forest replacement by exotic tree plantations (Teucher et al, 2020). This transformation of ecosystems also affects species diversity until today (Mulwa et al, 2021) and species composition (Schmitt et al, 2020). These changes of ecosystems also impact various ecosystem functions which are important for the resilience and recovering of ecosystems, and human livelihood quality.…”
Section: Study Areamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The development of such small-scale, habitat-speci c communities largely depends on two main factors: the degree of habitat specialisation and the dispersal of the respective species. Thus, the strong differentiation obtained in our study between forest interior and pasture communities might be the result of diverging abiotic and biotic conditions and resources provided by these strongly different habitat types, and the species relying on them (see Mulwa et al 2021). Open land species in both taxonomic groups show clear ecological as well as behavioural differences if compared with forest species, and the ight performance of birds and butter ies differs between these two habitat types (Le Roy et al 2019).…”
Section: Similarity In Community Structuresmentioning
confidence: 84%
“…Birds were sampled in the morning (6–10 AM) when they are most active. We considered birds within a radius of about 50 m (Mulwa et al., 2021). To avoid biases due to unfavourable weather conditions, bird counts were not carried out during rainy, windy or misty conditions (Ntongani & Andrew, 2013).…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Fragmentation reduces forest structural complexity which in turn reduces bird species diversity (Fischer & Lindenmayer, 2007; Rija et al., 2015; Sam et al., 2014) and affects bird functional traits such as feeding guilds (Benjara et al., 2021; Mulwa et al., 2021). The conversion of natural forests into plantation forests reduces bird species diversity (Hernandes & Miranda, 2010; Rurangwa et al., 2021) and alters bird species composition (Martinez‐Lanfranco et al., 2022) and functional traits like habitat preference (Hernandes & Miranda, 2010; Mulwa et al., 2021). The loss of avian species reduces ecosystem services (BirdLife International, 2020) and affects their role as biodiversity indicators for managing natural habitats (Almeida et al., 2018).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%