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Drivers of bird beta diversity in the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot are scale dependent: roles of land use, climate, and distance

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Abstract

In the last 50 years, intensive agriculture has replaced large tracts of rainforests. Such changes in land use are driving niche-based ecological processes that determine local community assembly. However, little is known about the relative importance of these anthropogenic niche-based processes, in comparison to climatic niche-based processes and spatial processes such as dispersal limitation. In this study, we use a variation partitioning approach to determine the relative importance of land-use change (ranked value of forest loss), climatic variation (temperature and precipitation), and distance between transects, on bird beta diversity at two different spatial scales within the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot. Our results show that the drivers of local community assembly are scale dependent. At the larger spatial scale, distance was more important than climate and land use for bird species composition, suggesting that dispersal limitation over the Palk Strait, which separates the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, is the main driver of local community assembly. At the smaller scale, climate was more important than land use, suggesting the importance of climatic niches. Therefore, to conserve all species in a biodiversity hotspot, it is important to consider geographic barriers and climatic variation along with land-use change.

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Data accessibility

Data are available from Dryad Digital Repository https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vk070 (Mammides et al. 2015).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to A. Jayarathna, R. M. Pathiraja, G. Ramachandran, W. Ranjith, M. V. I. Sanjeewanie, H. Sathischandra and S. Sidhu for collecting bird data. We thank T. R. S. Raman for overseeing the project in India. This study was supported by the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation and the American Institute for Indian Studies. E.G. appreciates the support of the Special Talents Recruitment Program of the People’s Republic of China and the Special Talents Recruitment Fund of Guangxi University during write up. Adelaide Scholarship International and Australian Research Council supported R.S. and L.P.K., respectively. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, 5000, Australia

    Rachakonda Sreekar & Lian Pin Koh

  2. Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, China

    Christos Mammides, Salindra Dayananda, Uromi M. Goodale & Eben Goodale

  3. Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, 666303, Yunnan, China

    Richard T. Corlett

  4. Foundation for Nature Conservation and Preservation, Panadura, 12500, Sri Lanka

    Salindra Dayananda

  5. Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka, Department of Zoology, University of Colombo, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka

    Sarath W. Kotagama

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  1. Rachakonda Sreekar
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Contributions

RS, LPK, CM, RTC, SD, and EG designed the study; UM, SWK, and EG acquired bird data; RS analyzed the data and drafted the article; all authors contributed to manuscript writing and approved for publication.

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Correspondence to Rachakonda Sreekar.

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Additional information

Communicated by Indrikis Krams.

There are multiple drivers of bird community assembly and the relative importance of each driver changes with spatial scale. Climate can be as important as land use for shaping bird communities.

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Sreekar, R., Koh, L.P., Mammides, C. et al. Drivers of bird beta diversity in the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot are scale dependent: roles of land use, climate, and distance. Oecologia 193, 801–809 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04671-3

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