Data from: Contrasting impacts of land use change on phylogenetic and functional diversity of tropical forest birds

1.Biodiversity conservation strategies increasingly target maintaining
evolutionary history and the resilience of ecosystem function, not just
species richness (SR). This has led to the emergence of two metrics
commonly proposed as tools for decision making: phylogenetic diversity
(PD) and functional diversity (FD). Yet the extent to which they are
interchangeable remains poorly understood. 2.We explore shifts in and
relationships between FD and PD of bird communities across a disturbance
gradient in Borneo, from old-growth tropical forest to oil palm
plantation. 3.We show a marked decline in PD, and an increase in
phylogenetic mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD) from forest to oil palm,
in line with declining SR across the gradient. However, phylogenetic mean
pairwise distance (MPD) is constrained by forest logging more than by
conversion to oil palm, taking account of SR. 4.The decline in FD across
the gradient is less severe than in PD, with all metrics indicating
relatively high trait diversity in oil palm despite low SR, although
functional redundancy is much reduced. Accounting for SR, levels of
functional over- or under-dispersion of bird communities are strongly
coupled to habitat disturbance level rather than to any equivalent
phylogenetic metric. 5.Policy Implications. We suggest that while
phylogenetic diversity (PD) is an improvement on species richness as a
proxy for functional diversity (FD), conservation decisions based on PD
alone cannot reliably safeguard maximal FD. Thus, PD and FD are related
but still complementary. Priority setting exercises should use these
metrics in combination to identify conservation targets.