Habitat fragmentation reduces nest survival in an Afrotropical bird community in a biodiversity hotspot

Habitat fragmentation reduces nest survival in an Afrotropical bird community in a biodiversity hotspot [1]

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Ecologists have long hypothesized that fragmentation of tropical landscapes reduces avian nest success. However, this hypothesis has not been rigorously assessed because of the difficulty of finding large numbers of well-hidden nests in tropical forests. Here we report that in the East Usambara Mountains in Tanzania, which are part of the Eastern Arc Mountains, a global biodiversity hotspot, that daily nest survival rate and nest success for seven of eight common understory bird species that we examined over a single breeding season were significantly lower in fragmented than in continuous forest, with the odds of nest failure for these seven species ranging from 1.9 to 196.8 times higher in fragmented than continuous forest.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/28/11488.abstract?etoc [2]

Publication Date:

12/07/2011

Author(s): William D. Newmark [3], Thomas R. Stanley [4]

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [5]

Vol:

108

Issue:

pp:

11488

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