Habitat quality is more important than matrix quality for bird communities in protected areas
Häkkilä, M., Abrego, N., Ovaskainen, O., & Mönkkönen, M. (2018). Habitat quality is more important than matrix quality for bird communities in protected areas. Ecology and Evolution, 8 (8), 4019-4030. doi:10.1002/ece3.3923
Julkaistu sarjassa
Ecology and EvolutionPäivämäärä
2018Oppiaine
Ekologia ja evoluutiobiologiaTekijänoikeudet
© 2018 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Protected areas are meant to preserve native local communities within their boundaries,
but they are not independent from their surroundings. Impoverished habitat
quality in the matrix might influence the species composition within the protected
areas through biotic homogenization. The aim of this study was to determine the
impacts of matrix quality on species richness and trait composition of bird communities
from the Finnish reserve area network and whether the communities are being
subject of biotic homogenization due to the lowered quality of the landscape matrix.
We used joint species distribution modeling to study how characteristics of the
Finnish forest reserves and the quality of their surrounding matrix alter species and
trait compositions of forest birds. The proportion of old forest within the reserves
was the main factor in explaining the bird community composition, and the bird communities
within the reserves did not strongly depend on the quality of the matrix.
Yet, in line with the homogenization theory, the beta-diversity within reserves embedded
in low-quality matrix was lower than that in high-quality matrix, and the average
abundance of regionally abundant species was higher. Influence of habitat quality
on bird community composition was largely explained by the species’ functional
traits. Most importantly, the community specialization index was low, and average
body size was high in areas with low proportion of old forest. We conclude that for
conserving local bird communities in northern Finnish protected forests, it is currently
more important to improve or maintain habitat quality within the reserves
than in the surrounding matrix. Nevertheless, we found signals of bird community
homogenization, and thus, activities that decrease the quality of the matrix are a
threat for bird communities.
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