Dispersal limitation predicts the spatial and temporal filtering of tropical bird communities in isolated forest fragments

The link between dispersal traits and patterns of community assembly remains a frontier in understanding how vertebrate communities persist in fragmented landscapes. Using experimental release trials and intensive field surveys of bird communities in fragmented forests of the Peruvian and Colombian Andes, we demonstrate that morphological traits related to movement (1) predict experimental flight performance and (2) exhibit dispersal-mediated environmental filtering at the community scale. After correcting for body size, four traits hypothesized to influence flight ability (wing length, wing pointedness, wing loading, and eye size) predicted distance flown across a hostile experimental landscape, with successful species having significantly longer pointed wings, carrying less mass per unit wing area (i.e., lower wing loading), and having smaller eyes. Species with larger eyes also displayed increased flight latency, potentially due to disability glare. At the community scale we detected...