Data from: Strong variation in land-use change impacts on tropical avian phylogenetic diversity between ecoregions highlights the need to sample large spatial scales

Forest conversion for agriculture is a major cause of tropical
biodiversity loss. Quantifying the biodiversity impacts of forest loss is
challenging because the severity of outcomes is influenced by spatial
scale, with the higher rate of species turnover in forests than in
farmland increasing the severity of losses at larger relative to smaller
scales. Conservation efforts increasingly prioritise phylogenetic
diversity to preserve unique evolutionary history under global change, but
how deforestation-driven changes in phylogenetic diversity vary across
large spatial scales remains a key question. We compiled a large field
database from across 13 biogeographically diverse regions affected by
deforestation for cattle farming, covering most of Colombia, a megadiverse
tropical country. We use occupancy models to estimate bird communities for
1,614 species across 13 ecoregions and nationally in both forest and
pasture habitats. This dataset includes base information and scripts to
quantify six different phylogenetic diversity metrics in forest and
pasture habitats. and the process to compare changes between habitats and
the differences from regional to national scales. It also includes data to
estimate and plot changes in phylogenetic trees for bird communities
across ecoregions and to replicate the study area map. We found that
although single regional-scale loss of phylogenetic diversity was, on
averag,e comparable to broader scales, there was high variability between
regional units. Such underestimation of national-scale impacts highlights
the importance of sampling across multiple regions.