Species richness response to human pressure hides important assemblage transformations.

ABSTRACT: Human activities’ negative impact on biodiversity is undisputed, but debate remains vivid on their effect on species richness, a key index in ecology and conservation. While some studies suggest that species richness declines with human pressure, others show that it can be insensitive or even respond positively to some human pressure, because some species (“losers”) are replaced by others (“winners”). However, many winners are favored by intermediate pressure but decline when pressure becomes too high, and we can thus expect species richness to decline above a certain human pressure. Analyzing eBird data in tropical forests, I find that, under a certain threshold, increasing human footprint causes important composition changes, with losers (habitat specialist, endemic, sensitive, and threa

SUBMITTER: Cazalis V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9171506 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature