Untangling the imprints of climate, geography and land use/cover on bird diversity in the South American Gran Chaco

Aim: To evaluate the structure of bird communities throughout the South American Gran Chaco determining the effects of climate, geography, and land use/land cover in bird beta diversity, as well as to understand the beta-diversity processes underlying land-use changes across broad spatial ranges.

Taxon: Birds.

Location: South American Gran Chaco.

Methods: We constructed a site-by-species matrix with occurrence probabilities of 293 bird species across 2669 spatial units tiling completely the study area. Based on this matrix, we calculated pairwise dissimilarities scores and performed a hierarchical cluster analysis for describing the spatial configuration of dissimilarities. The clustering result was spatially represented through an original venation map with boundaries between sites widened in the function of their distance in the dendrogram. We used the Generalized Dissimilarity Modelling approach to model beta diversity, using geographic distance, climatic and land use/land c...