Responses of functional traits in cavity-nesting birds to logging in subtropical and temperate forests of the Americas

Abstract

Logging causes changes in habitat structure, which can potentially lead to variations in taxonomic and functional richness of biodiversity. Studies on how functional traits in birds are affected by logging operations can provide an important element for the understanding of ecosystem processes. In this paper, we examined how logging in subtropical Andean forests influenced taxonomic and functional diversity of cavity-nesting birds. We used these results to compare how logging affected ecosystem functions in temperate and subtropical forests of the Americas. We used point-counts to examine the effects of logging on taxonomic and functional traits in avian communities (Functional Richness, Functional evenness, Functional Divergence, and Community-weighted mean). We found that logging changed bird richness and abundance, although it had no effect on the functional response to the measured traits. The comparison of our results with those of temperate forests of Canada and Chile reveals differences in the functional richness of birds in these habitats, with a lower impact of logging on functional traits. We highlight the importance of including functional traits in the analyses, since the reduction in the species richness and abundance may not be translated into functional changes within the ecosystem.