Roads as overlooked drivers of change in bird communities.

Road networks are expanding globally, promoting numerous impacts on biodiversity, resulting in important changes in species occurrence patterns, but there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the effect of roads at the community level, namely species richness, diversity and trait selection. Birds are key components of ecosystems, providing a multitude of ecosystem services, and are also well-studied across Europe, thus allowing testing hypothesis on road effects at the community level. Using a citizen-based European wide dataset we tested if, all else being equal, increasing road density leads to i) a reduction in species richness, ii) an increase in composition dissimilarity, and iii) a higher prevalence of species traits that allow them to cope with the changing environment. Using a subset of data available in eBird database, we related species occurrence with road density and environmental variables, including land use and climate. Increasing road density was related to a decrease in species richness and an increase in compositional dissimilarity. Species with higher body mass, predominantly feeding on invertebrates, nesting on the ground, and with higher relative brain mass tend to avoid areas with higher road density; whereas those species that are city dwellers become more common in areas with increasing road density. Moreover, species currently showing a positive population trend were related to areas with higher road density. Overall, we show that roads are probably changing bird communities, altering the species richness and composition, and by filtering species traits. Such outcomes suggest that roads can alter the ecosystem functioning and integrity as well their ecological networks, particularly on species interactions, and may ultimately lead to evolutionary changes.

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Ascensão F. Revilla E. y Pereira H.M. Roads as overlooked drivers of change in bird communities. Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe, 2021.

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Tipo de recurso Texto
Fecha de creación 23-05-2025
Fecha de última modificación 23-05-2025
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Identificador de los metadatos 3c007842-b2ca-55bd-98b9-a9441b1350f7
Idioma de los metadatos Español
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Categoría temática ISO 19115 biota
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Nombre del autor Ascensão, F., Revilla, E. y Pereira, H.M.
Nombre del editor Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe
Identificador alternativo ISBN: 978-972-778-182-9
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