Bird diversity environment relationship in urban parks and cemeteries of the Neotropics during breeding and non breeding seasons

LEVEAU, LM; CAMÍN SERGIO; MARONE, LUIS

PeerJ

PeerJ, Inc

Lugar: California; Año: 2022

2167-8359

Background: Urbanization will increase in the next decades, causing the loss of greenareas and bird diversity within cities. There is a lack of studies at a continental scaleanalyzing the relationship between urban green areas, such as parks and cemeteries,and bird species richness in the Neotropical region. Bird diversity-environmentrelationships in urban parks and cemeteries may be influenced by latitudinalgradients or species-area relationships. However, the seasonal variation of speciesdiversity- environment has not been analyzed at a continental scale in theNeotropics.Methods: Bird surveys were conducted in 36 cemeteries and 37 parks within 18Neotropical cities during non-breeding and breeding seasons. Bird diversity wasassessed through Hill numbers, focusing on species richness, the effective number ofspecies derived from Shannon index and the Simpson index. Environmentalvariables included latitude, altitude, and local scale variables such as area size, habitatdiversity and pedestrian traffic.Results: Species richness and Shannon diversity were higher during the breedingseason, whereas Simpson diversity did not vary between seasons. During bothseasons, species richness increased with area size, was negatively related to altitude,and was the highest at 20 latitude. Species richness was also positively related tohabitat diversity, pedestrian traffic, and was highest in suburban areas during thenon-breeding season. Shannon and Simpson diversity showed significantrelationships with habitat diversity and area size during the breeding season. Birddiversity was similar between parks and cemeteries.Discussion: Our results showed that urban parks and cemeteries have similar rolesin conserving urban bird diversity in Neotropical cities. However, species diversityenvironment relations at the continental scale varied between seasons, highlightingthe importance of conducting annual studies.