The relative effects of forest amount, forest configuration, and urban matrix quality on forest breeding birds.

ABSTRACT: Urbanization modifies landscape structure in three major ways that impact avian diversity in remnant habitat: habitat amount is reduced and habitat configuration and matrix quality are altered. The relative effects of these three components of landscape structure are relatively well-studied in agricultural landscapes, but little is known about the relative effect of urban matrix quality. We addressed this gap by investigating the relative effects of forest amount, forest configuration, and matrix quality, indicated by degree of urbanization and agriculture amount, on the diversity of three guilds of forest birds using data from 13,763 point counts from Pennsylvania, USA. Forest amount had the largest independent effect on forest bird diversity, followed by matrix quality, then forest confi

SUBMITTER: Shoffner A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6244229 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature