Roads as overlooked drivers of change in bird communities.

Road networks are expanding globally, promoting numerous impacts on biodiversity, resulting in important changes in species occurrence patterns, but there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the effect of roads at the community level, namely species richness, diversity and trait selection. Birds are key components of ecosystems, providing a multitude of ecosystem services, and are also well-studied across Europe, thus allowing testing hypothesis on road effects at the community level. Using a citizen-based European wide dataset we tested if, all else being equal, increasing road density leads to i) a reduction in species richness, ii) an increase in composition dissimilarity, and iii) a higher prevalence of species traits that allow them to cope with the changing environment. Using a subset of data available in eBird database, we related species occurrence with road density and environmental variables, including land use and climate. Increasing road density was related to a decrease in species richness and an increase in compositional dissimilarity. Species with higher body mass, predominantly feeding on invertebrates, nesting on the ground, and with higher relative brain mass tend to avoid areas with higher road density; whereas those species that are city dwellers become more common in areas with increasing road density. Moreover, species currently showing a positive population trend were related to areas with higher road density. Overall, we show that roads are probably changing bird communities, altering the species richness and composition, and by filtering species traits. Such outcomes suggest that roads can alter the ecosystem functioning and integrity as well their ecological networks, particularly on species interactions, and may ultimately lead to evolutionary changes.

Data and Resources

Cite as

Ascensão F. Revilla E. y Pereira H.M. Roads as overlooked drivers of change in bird communities. Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe, 2021.

Clipboard Icon
Retrieved: 20 Jan 2025 15:48:01

Metadata
Download
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Basic information
Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-12-02
Date of last revision 2025-01-20
Show changelog
Metadata identifier 3c007842-b2ca-55bd-98b9-a9441b1350f7
Metadata language Spanish
Themes (NTI-RISP)
High-value dataset category
ISO 19115 topic category biota
Keyword URIs
Bibliographic information
Name of the dataset creator Ascensão, F., Revilla, E. y Pereira, H.M.
Name of the dataset editor Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe
Other identifier ISBN: 978-972-778-182-9
Identifier of the dataset creator
Email of the dataset creator
Website of the dataset creator
Provenance
Lineage statement
Metadata Standard
Version notes
Version