Functional traits of avian species of an Afrotropical forest

Aim: Although land-use change is a leading cause of biodiversity loss worldwide, there is scant information on the extent to which it has affected the structure and composition of bird communities in the Afrotropical region. This study aimed to quantify the effects of habitat transformation on taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity in Afrotropical bird communities.

Location: Nyungwe landscape, a montane rainforest with adjoining farmland in south-west Rwanda.

Methods: Data on bird occurrence, abundance, and functional traits were collected in 2017/18 using point-counts. We also collected data on habitat and morphological traits for all bird species recorded. We quantified bird diversity using a range of metrics, including the Inverse Simpson index, functional dispersion and the standardized effect size of mean nearest taxon distance.

Results: In comparison to primary forest areas, even low levels of land-use change altered species composition, and reduced species div...