Abstract
AimsWe aim to understand bird richness and variation in species composition (beta diversity) along a 630 km riparian landscape in the Altai Mountains of China and to test whether vegetation cover is the main explanation of species diversity.MethodsWe selected nine regions along a gradient of natural vegetation change. Bird surveys and environmental measurements were conducted at 10 points in each of the nine regions. We collected environmental land cover variables such as wood cover (area proportion of trees and shrubs with saplings in habitats; here trees are woody plant with a single trunk and higher than 3 m, shrubs and saplings are distinguished from trees by their multiple trunks and shorter height) and tree cover, and two climate factors which were Annual Mean Temperature (AMT) and Annual Precipitation (AP). We used Liner Regression Models to explore the correlation between bird species richness and environmental variables. We used Sørensen's dissimilarity index to measure birds' beta diversity, and quantified the contribution of environmental variables to this pattern using a Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA).ResultsWood cover was the strongest predictor of overall, insectivore, and omnivore bird richness. Regions with wood cover contained more bird species. Beta diversity was overall high in the studied regions, and turnover components occupied a major part of beta diversity. Wood cover and AP were significant predictors of bird species composition explaining 33.24% of bird beta diversity together.ConclusionsWood vegetation including trees, shrubs, and saplings, rather than only trees, contains high bird richness. High beta diversity suggests that expansion of the existing nature reserves is needed in the riparian landscapes to capture the variation in bird species composition. Thus all wood cover in the overall riparian landscapes of Altai Mountains should be protected from farming and grazing to improve bird conservation outcomes.OPEN RESEARCH BADGES This article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at Raw bird data in this study: osf.io/78qcw; Raw environment data: osf.io/qr5cw.
Highlights
Riparian landscapes are among the most diverse and complex terrestrial habitats which contain a variety of biota (Naiman, Decamps, & Pollock, 1993)
Previous research has been focusing on the impacts of local habitat characteristics in riparian regions on species diversity (Liang et al, 2018; Martin, McIntyre, Catterall, & Possingham, 2006), with many studies showing that bird richness was positively related to the width of riparian habitats (Hillman et al, 2016; Nimmo, Haslem, Radford, Hall, & Bennett, 2016; Shirley & Smith, 2005; Zimbres, Peres, & Machado, 2017) and the highly heterogeneous vegetation structure (Farley, Ellis, Stuart, & Scott, 1994; Gomez, Rivera, Politi, & Ruggera, 2016; Lynn et al, 1998), in which trees and/or woods are usually the most important
We explored the combination of variables that most associated with bird species richness using Multiple Linear Regression (MLR)
Summary
Riparian landscapes are among the most diverse and complex terrestrial habitats which contain a variety of biota (Naiman, Decamps, & Pollock, 1993). Finding out which environmental factors affect bird species richness is important to maintain diversity in these areas. Understanding bird beta diversity and its underlying mechanisms in riparian landscapes could be helpful to set up conservation areas. In this context, we investigated bird diversity (species richness and beta diversity) and tested the role of land cover and climate factors in shaping bird richness and composition in riparian landscapes. We aim to identify habitats of particular conservation value due to species richness and beta diversity along the riparian landscapes of Altai Mountains, China
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