Historical anthropogenic stressors affect bird ecology and feather development in neotropical forests

Fragmentation and habitat loss driven by agricultural expansion have significantly affected bird ecology. Additionally, the growing use of agrochemicals impacts ecosystems and avian communities. Tools such as isotopic analysis provide reliable proxies for assessing organisms’ habitat use and diet, and can also reflect environmental alterations, such as increased input of agrochemicals and shifts in baseline resources. By employing stable isotope analysis of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) on bird feathers over an extensive timescale, we investigated whether human impacts have changed their habitat use, diet, and feather development in two key regions of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: the Pernambuco and Serra do Mar areas of endemism. We analyzed feathers from 1,778 museum specimens, categorized by region, trophic guild, and temporal groups (historical and modern). Furthermore, we examined fault bars in the wing and tail feathers of 856 specimens to assess changes in feather developmen..., , # Historical anthropogenic stressors affect bird ecology and feather development in neotropical forests

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.rfj6q57nv](10.5061/dryad.rfj6q57nv)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset includes information for 1,778 individual birds sampled in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Each row represents a single individual.

### Files and variables

#### File: dataset.csv

##### Variables

* ID: Bird species name
* Time: Temporal group of the specimen. Historical: collected between 1893 and ~1970/1980. Modern: collected between ~1970/1980 and 2022
* d13C: Stable carbon isotope value (δ13C, ‰) measured from feathers.
* d15N: Stable nitrogen isotope value (δ15N, ‰) measured from feathers.
* Guild: Trophic guild categorization of the species — frugivore, granivore, insectivore, nectarivore, or omnivore
* Region: Sampling region - 'Pernambuco' or 'Serra do Mar', two areas within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
* Year: Year the individual was collected.,