Adopting habitat-use to infer movement potential and sensitivity to human disturbance of birds in a Neotropical Savannah

Abstract

The degree of habitat specificity determines the distinctive ways that birds respond to land-use and climate change. Information on habitat-use, movement potential and sensitivity to human disturbance can promote reliable predictions on species response to spatial and temporal global changes. Here, we made an extensive review about habitat-use of 52 birds with distribution mainly in the Cerrado domain, a world hotspot with alarming climate change and land-use projections. We described habitat-use, classified habitats into three categories (grasslands, savannahs, and forests), inferred movement potential and sensitivity to human disturbance from records in anthropogenic matrices and identified knowledge gaps. More than one-half of the species surveyed predominantly use only one major natural habitat category, mostly forests, or are highly associated to microhabitats or to specific habitat features (62%, n = 32). Grasslands were the most used habitat (n = 32). Most species apparently will encounter difficulties to move through the landscape (27% and 36% of the species have low and medium movement potential, respectively) and are highly sensitive to human disturbance (48%). Furthermore, a considerable low number of species was frequently recorded in non-natural habitats and considered of low sensitivity (n = 6). Our results offer a wide understanding of relevant habitats and microhabitats for Cerrado birds and can add more reality to future model estimates, enhancing success of current and future conservation initiatives.