Data from: Avian functional responses to landscape recovery

Restoring native vegetation in agricultural landscapes can reverse
biodiversity declines via species gains. Depending on whether the traits
of colonizers are complementary or redundant to the assemblage, species
gains can increase the efficiency or stability of ecological functions,
yet detecting these processes is not straightforward. We propose a new
conceptual model to identify potential changes to complementarity and
redundancy in response to landscape change via relative changes in
taxonomic and functional richness. We applied our model to a 14-year study
of birds across an extensive agricultural region. We found compelling
evidence that high levels of landscape-scale tree cover and patch-scale
restoration were significant determinants of functional change in the
overall bird assemblage. This was true for every one of the six traits
investigated individually, indicating increased trait-specific functional
complementarity and redundancy in the assemblage. Applying our conceptual
model to species diversity data provided new insights into how the return
of vertebrates to restored landscapes may affect ecological function.