Sixty years of change in avian communities of the Pacific Northwest.

ABSTRACT: Bird communities are influenced by local and regional processes. The degree to which communities are dynamic has implications for projecting responses in community composition as birds track geographic shifts of their habitats. Historic datasets offer a legacy of information that can be used to quantify changes over time in avian community composition. A rare, highly-detailed avian survey of multiple habitat types in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, was conducted in 1952. We resurveyed the same sites in 2013 and evaluated whether observed results agreed with theoretical patterns of community change. We compared alpha, beta, and gamma diversity between survey periods and evaluated shifts in categorical abundances of species. Most patterns of change were consistent with community turnover. Nea

SUBMITTER: Curtis JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4558065 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature