Robustness of habitat-based surrogates of animal diversity: a multi-taxa comparison over time

Many animal taxa respond strongly to spatial and temporal variation in vegetation structure and floristic composition, suggesting that changes in vegetation could be a cheap and readily observable surrogate for changes in animal assemblages. Yet there is considerable uncertainty about how different taxa respond to vegetation over time, potentially limiting the application of habitat-based surrogates to many areas of applied ecology. We examined the strength and temporal consistency of habitat-based surrogates of three different vertebrate taxa in a landscape with multiple vegetation types. We used regression models to quantify the relationships between six vegetation attributes (species richness and percentage cover of overstorey, midstorey and understorey) and three measures of bird, mammal and reptile assemblages (abundance, species richness and composition). We found that overstorey richness and cover had both consistent and strong positive effects on bird assemblages. Vegetation eff...