Avian phylogenetic and functional diversity are better conserved by land-sparing than land-sharing farming in lowland tropical forests

The transformation of natural habitats for farming is a major driver of tropical biodiversity loss. To mitigate impacts, two alternatives are promoted: intensifying agriculture to offset protected areas (land sparing) or integrating wildlife-friendly habitats within farmland (land sharing). In the montane and dry tropics, phylogenetic and functional diversity, which underpin evolutionary values and the provision of ecosystem functioning and services, are best protected by land sparing. A key question is how these components of biodiversity are best conserved in the more stable environments of lowland moist tropical forests.
Focusing on cattle farming within the Colombian Amazon, we sampled how the occupancy of 280 bird species varies between forest and pasture spanning gradients of wildlife-friendly features. We then simulated scenarios of land-sparing and land-sharing farming to predict impacts on phylogenetic and functional diversity metrics.
Predicted metrics differed marginally betw..., , , # Data from: Avian phylogenetic and functional diversity are better conserved by land-sparing than land-sharing farming in lowland tropical forests

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc40](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc40)

Files provided include raw (field) and pre-processed datasets (CSV and RDS files), and R software scripts (4 files) to conduct all analyses described in the Journal article.

## Description of the data and file structure

We provide the minimum amount of data necessary to reproduce all the code. Scripts are numbered and should be run sequentially as each script relies on outputs generated in the previous ones.

### Attached files.

ED_values_amazonbirds.csv

* species: Scientific name following taxonomy from Jetz et al., (2012)
* ED_mean: Evolutionary distinctness computed using the fair proportions method (Kembel et al., 2010) and averaged across 10000 phylogenetic trees.
* EDR_mean: ED divided by species range area from Tobias et al., (2022)

Functional_tr...