Data from: Land sparing outperforms land sharing across an elevational gradient in tropical cattle-farming landscapes

Farming is a major driver of biodiversity loss globally, particularly in
the tropics, where regions of exceptional biodiversity coincide with
intense pressure from forest conversion. Minimising biodiversity loss in
these landscapes is critical. Land-sharing and land-sparing strategies
offer contrasting approaches to managing this challenge. Land sharing
integrates wildlife-friendly practices within farmland, while land sparing
concentrates production to free up land for natural habitat conservation.
Previous studies suggest that land sparing often delivers greater
conservation benefits, especially in tropical cattle-farming systems.
However, it remains unclear whether these outcomes hold across steep
elevational gradients, such as those found in the tropical Andes. We
address this question by evaluating bird communities along an elevational
gradient (900–3400 m) in the eastern cordillera of Colombia, a
biodiversity hotspot with many endemic and range-restricted species. Using
extensive field data and scenario-based simulations, we compared the
effects of land-sharing and land-sparing strategies on multiple dimensions
of biodiversity (species richness, phylogenetic and functional diversity).
this dataset includes occupancy probabilities to estimate avian communites
along an elevational gradient, computations of changes in 12 biodiversity
metrics from forest to pasture, simulated scenarios of land sharing and
land sparing and comparison of metrics between the two management
strategies. We found that species richness and Faith’s phylogenetic
diversity were consistently higher under land sparing across all
elevations. Sparing strategies also retained greater evolutionary
uniqueness. In contrast, functional diversity metrics changed little
across scenarios, suggesting strong functional redundancy in these
communities.