Sharing land via keystone structure: retaining naturally regenerated trees may efficiently benefit birds in plantations

Meeting food/wood demands with increasing human population and per-capita consumption is a pressing conservation issue, and is often framed as a choice between land sparing and land sharing. Although most empirical studies comparing the efficacy of land sparing and sharing supported land sparing, land sharing may be more efficient if its performance is tested by rigorous experimental design and habitat structures providing crucial resources for various species––keystone structures––are clearly involved. We launched a manipulative experiment to retain naturally regenerated broad-leaved trees when harvesting conifer plantations in central Hokkaido, northern Japan. We surveyed birds in harvested treatments, unharvested plantation controls and natural forest references one-year before the harvest and for three consecutive post-harvest years. We developed a hierarchical community model separating abundance and space-use (territorial proportion overlapping treatment plots) subject to imperfec..., We conducted a bird survey to examine the efficacy of retention forestry in conifer plantations. We surveyed birds in harvested treatments, unharvested plantation controls and natural forest references before and after the treatment (harvesting). 
Here we upload the source data, R statistical code used to get the results shown in the main text, and parameter estimates obtained. , We upload the following four items:

before_after_harvest-excl-edge-incl-large.R: R statistical code
bird_before_after_harvest.csv: bird census data we collected in the field
site_v2.csv: IDs of 23 surveyed stands
site_v3.csv: properties of 23 stands used in the analysis
parameter estimates - excl_edge_incl_large.xlsx: parameter estimates from the analysis by excluding edge records while including large-sized species