Open AccessLong-term monitoring reveals widespread and severe declines of understory birds in a protected Neotropical forest
Author(s) -
Henry S. Pollock
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2108731119
Subject(s) - guild , understory , ecology , abundance (ecology) , biology , breeding bird survey , foraging , population , temperate rainforest , range (aeronautics) , population decline , netting , geography , relative species abundance , habitat , ecosystem , canopy , demography , materials science , sociology , political science , law , composite material
Significance We leveraged a 44-y population study of Neotropical understory birds from a protected forest reserve in central Panama to document widespread and severe declines in bird abundance. Our findings provide evidence that tropical bird populations may be undergoing systematic declines, even in relatively intact forests. The implications of these findings are that biodiversity baselines may be shifting over time, and large tracts of tropical forest may not be sufficient for maintaining stable bird populations. Our study highlights the importance of long-term monitoring for detecting cryptic losses in biodiversity and motivates the need for future work drilling down to the underlying mechanisms to understand and mitigate future declines.