Journal article
Combining historical accounts with contemporary bird survey data identifies changes in an avian community over a period of anthropogenic change
Ibis (London, England), Vol.164(2), pp.411-422
04/01/2022
DOI: 10.1111/ibi.13018
Abstract
Declines in bird abundance and diversity are well documented over regional-to-global extents. Identifying long-term change in bird communities over smaller extents, particularly during periods of rapid anthropogenic change, is vital to understanding how such change affects species, though such local-level declines are less well documented. Although datasets exist to support such analyses over large extents, their late twentieth and early twenty-first century focus and broadly dispersed sampling locations limit their usefulness in local-level analyses. Local-level studies may therefore lack data at appropriate spatio-temporal scales; however, descriptive, historical accounts could inform such analyses. We integrated historical accounts with contemporary data to identify local changes in songbird abundance. We focused on Johnson County, Iowa, USA, during a period of agricultural expansion and intensification and urbanization. We used Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn's multiple-comparison tests to identify changes in songbird functional-group abundance using an early twentieth century account and contemporary field-collected data, both classified to ordinal scales to facilitate analyses. Species richness increased overall, largely due to colonization by exotic species. The relative abundance of most groups remained similar (e.g. exotics, non-migratory, urban-tolerant, granivores) and species that use anthropogenic resources increased in abundance, but many groups decreased (e.g. grassland species and insectivores). These findings shed light on ways in which avian communities change over relatively small extents during periods of rapid anthropogenic land-cover change. Additionally, by demonstrating a systematic approach for integrating qualitative historical accounts with contemporary abundance data, this work will facilitate additional studies that build understanding of long-term, local-level change in bird communities. Identifying local-level changes in avian communities in urbanizing agricultural regions such as this one could additionally identify species likely to require conservation interventions to survive periods of intense land-cover change.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Combining historical accounts with contemporary bird survey data identifies changes in an avian community over a period of anthropogenic change
- Creators
- Jonah Alderson - Environmental Sciences 115 Trowbridge Hall Iowa City IA 52242 USAHeather A. Sander - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Ibis (London, England), Vol.164(2), pp.411-422
- Publisher
- Wiley
- DOI
- 10.1111/ibi.13018
- ISSN
- 0019-1019
- eISSN
- 1474-919X
- Number of pages
- 12
- Grant note
- Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates and Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/01/2022
- Academic Unit
- Geographical and Sustainability Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984259387102771
Metrics
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