Abstract
Species loss has attracted much attention among scientists for more than half a century. However, we have little information on the trends in phylogenetic and functional changes behind the species loss although this information is always asynchronous and important for conservation and management. We measured community trends in Anatidae (ducks and geese) for the last 50 yr to quantify trends in phylogenetic and functional diversity patterns coinciding with taxonomic historical dynamics. We used one‐way ANOVAs to test if there was a significant historical trend in communities of Anatidae. We characterized taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of communities. For taxonomic diversity, we used species richness (SR). For phylogenetic diversity, we calculated the standardized effect size of mean pairwise distances (ses.MPD) and the standard effect size of mean nearest taxon distances (ses.MNTD) in communities. For functional diversity, we calculated functional richness (FRic), functional evenness (FEve), functional divergence (FDiv), and the community‐level weighted means (CWM) of trait values for diet, foraging stratum, and body mass, separately. From the 1950s to 2010s, species richness declined without significant trends. The ses.MNTD of Anatidae communities showed no clear trends. However, ses.MPD of Anatidae communities declined dramatically during this period. For functional diversity, functional evenness of diet, foraging stratum, body mass, and functional dispersion of diet, foraging stratum did not increase or decline significantly. However, functional evenness of all traits, functional richness, and functional dispersion of body mass showed declined trends. The basic phylogenetic diversity and species body mass of Anatidae communities declined significantly because of a declining trend in the relative independent branch of geese. This makes it more challenging for implement community recovery in the future. More attention in conservation biology should consider taxonomic diversity and asynchrony in phylogenetic and functional diversity.
Highlights
The global decline in animals, especially birds, has been a central topic in ecology for nearly haft a century (Rosenberg et al 2019)
Non-Passeriformes (Zheng 1955), with the data set from the 1960s extracted from Guan et al (1963), the data set from the 1970s was extracted from Bird Distribution List of China (Zheng 1975), the data set from the 1980s was extracted from Deng et al (1989), the data set from the 2000s was extracted from China Bird Report, and a data set from the 2010s was extracted from our expert surveys
The five dominant species were Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata), Northern Pintail (A. acuta), Eurasian Wigeon (A. penelope), Green-winged Teal (A. crecca), and Tufted Duck (Aythya fuligula), and those five species constituted more than 90% of total abundance
Summary
The global decline in animals, especially birds, has been a central topic in ecology for nearly haft a century (Rosenberg et al 2019). In Europe, a study using a 30-yr data set of 144 bird species revealed that avian abundance declined while most of this decline was attributed to common species (Inger et al 2015).
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