DOI: 10.5061/dryad.brv15dvb6
title: Trait shifts in bird communities from primary forest to human settlements in Mexican seasonal forests: Are there ruderal birds?

description: Agriculture, cattle grazing, and human settlements negatively affect bird
 biodiversity, driving the loss of ecologically specialized species and
 favoring the dominance of generalists. Because ecological pressures define
 organisms' success by acting on their intrinsic traits, biodiversity
 loss due to anthropization might cause directional trait shifts. Here, we
 use a trait-based approach to find empirical evidence of trait-shifts in
 bird communities across an anthropization gradient in seasonal forests in
 central Mexico. We performed point-count bird surveys within a region of
 tropical deciduous and seasonal oak forests considering three degrees of
 anthropization: primary forest, secondary growth, and human settlements. A
 multivariate analysis (PCA) showed similar trait-covariation patterns for
 both forest types; in the anthropized habitat the bird communities
 exhibited shorter life-cycles, higher fecundity, and broader ecological
 niches (diet, foraging habitat, and nesting resources) than those in the
 primary forests. Our finding of directional trait shifts resembles
 Evolutionary Ecological Strategies Theory (EES) predictions for successful
 organisms within highly disturbed anthropized habitats, which are known as
 a “ruderal adaptative strategy” in the EES framework. The use of
 trait-based approaches could improve ecological generalizations in bird
 communities, leading to a better understanding of avian
 biodiversity's responses to anthropization.
description: SUPPLEMENTARY TABLE 1. Raw trait data of recorded resident bird
 species in seasonal tropical and oak forests in the Alto Balsas region,
 Guerrero. For species in which life-history traits
 values were not available, we considered the phylogenetically closest
 species with available data. Where more than one value was available, we
 used the median of the available values. Information
 sources for trait data are shown as numbers, and also are listed
 below.  REFERENCES<br>1.     Atanasov, A.T.
 (2008). The near to linear allometric relationship between the total
 metabolic energy per life span and the body mass of aves. Journal of
 Animal and Veterinary Advances 7:425-432.<br>2.     Billerman, S.
 M., Keeney, B. K., Rodewald, P. G., Schulenberg, T. S. (2020). Birds of
 the World. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.
 https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/home<br>3.     Carey, J. R. and D.S.
 Judge (2000). Longevity Records: Life Spans of Mammals, Birds, Amphibians,
 Reptiles, and Fish. Odense University Press.<br>4.     Chesser, R.
 T., S. M. Billerman, K. J. Burns, C. Cicero, J. L. Dunn, A. W. Kratter, I.
 J. Lovette, N. A. Mason, P. C. Rasmussen, J. V. Remsen, Jr., D. F. Stotz,
 and K. Winker. (2020). Check-list of North American Birds (online).
 American Ornithological Society.
 http://checklist.aou.org/taxa<br>5.     Dunning, J.B. (2008). CRC
 Handbook of Avian Body Masses. CRC Press, Taylor y Francis
 Group.<br>6.     González-Salazar, C. (2014). La estructura de los
 ensambles de especies en el espacio y tiempo. Doctoral degree Thesis.
 Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
 México.<br>7.     Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A guide to
 the birds of Mexico and northern Central America. Oxford Univesity Press.
 E.U.A.<br>8.     Myers, P., Espinosa, R., Parr, C. S., Jones, T.,
 Hammond, G. S., Dewey, T. A. (2021). The Animal Diversity Web (online).
 Accessed at https://animaldiversity.org.<br>9.     Snow, D. W., and
 A. Lill (1974). Longevity records for some neotropical birds. The Condor
 76:262-267.<br>10.  Tacutu, R., Thornton, D., Johnson, E., Budovsky,
 A., Barardo, D., Craig, T., Diana, E., Lehmann, G., Toren, D., Wang, J.,
 Fraifeld, V. E., de Magalhaes, J. P. (2018). Human Ageing Genomic
 Resources: new and updated databases. Nucleic Acids Research
 46(D1):D1083-D1090<br>11.  United States Geological Survey. (2021).
 Longevity records of North American birds. Version 2021.1 Patuxent
 Wildlife Research Center.
 https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/longevity/longevity_main.cfm<br><br>SUPPLEMENTARY TABLE 2. Taxonomic list and raw abundance data of recorded resident bird species in seasonal tropical and oak forests in the Alto Balsas region, Guerrero.<br>Taxonomy follows American Ornithologist Society criteria (Chesser et al. 2021).<br><br>Raw abundance data are presented. The counts for each point event, forest type and anthropization level (primary forest = p; second-growth = sg; and human settlements = hs) are shown separately. Chesser, R. T., S. M. Billerman, K. J. Burns, C. Cicero, J. L. Dunn, B. E. Hernández-Baños, A. W. Kratter, I. J. Lovette, N. A. Mason, P. C. Rasmussen, J. V. Remsen, Jr., D. F. Stotz, and K. Winker. 2021. Check-list of North American Birds (online). American Ornithological Society. http://checklist.aou.org/taxa We carried out four series of bird counts between February 2014 and May 2016 in eight sites in the tropical and oak forests. We surveyed three sites in primary forest, three is secondary growth, and two in human settlements in each forest type. We amassed a total of 204 point-counts in the tropical forest (76 in primary forest, 72 in secondary growth, and 56 in human settlements), and 202 within the oak forest (72 in primary forest, 69 in secondary growth, and 61 in human settlements). Showed data are raw data abundace (recorded individuals).