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Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea

The usually positive inter-specific relationship between geographical range size and the abundance of local bird populations comes with exceptions. On continents, the majority of these exceptions have been described from tropical montane areas in Africa, where geographically-restricted bird species...

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Autores principales: Sam, Katerina, Koane, Bonny
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923179
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9727
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author Sam, Katerina
Koane, Bonny
author_facet Sam, Katerina
Koane, Bonny
author_sort Sam, Katerina
collection PubMed
description The usually positive inter-specific relationship between geographical range size and the abundance of local bird populations comes with exceptions. On continents, the majority of these exceptions have been described from tropical montane areas in Africa, where geographically-restricted bird species are unusually abundant. We asked how the local abundances of passerine and non-passerine bird species along an elevational gradient on Mt. Wilhelm, Papua New Guinea relate to their geographical range size. We collected data on bird assemblages at eight elevations (200–3,700 m, at 500 m elevational increments). We used a standardized point-counts at 16 points at each elevational study site. We partitioned the birds into feeding guilds, and we obtained data on geographical range sizes from the Bird-Life International data zone. We observed a positive relationship between abundance and geographical range size in the lowlands. This trend changed to a negative one towards higher elevations. The total abundances of the assemblage showed a hump-shaped pattern along the elevational gradient, with passerine birds, namely passerine insectivores, driving the observed pattern. In contrast to abundances, the mean biomass of the bird assemblages decreased with increasing elevation. Our results show that montane bird species maintain dense populations which compensate for the decreased available area near the top of the mountain.
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spelling pubmed-74579282020-09-11 Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea Sam, Katerina Koane, Bonny PeerJ Biodiversity The usually positive inter-specific relationship between geographical range size and the abundance of local bird populations comes with exceptions. On continents, the majority of these exceptions have been described from tropical montane areas in Africa, where geographically-restricted bird species are unusually abundant. We asked how the local abundances of passerine and non-passerine bird species along an elevational gradient on Mt. Wilhelm, Papua New Guinea relate to their geographical range size. We collected data on bird assemblages at eight elevations (200–3,700 m, at 500 m elevational increments). We used a standardized point-counts at 16 points at each elevational study site. We partitioned the birds into feeding guilds, and we obtained data on geographical range sizes from the Bird-Life International data zone. We observed a positive relationship between abundance and geographical range size in the lowlands. This trend changed to a negative one towards higher elevations. The total abundances of the assemblage showed a hump-shaped pattern along the elevational gradient, with passerine birds, namely passerine insectivores, driving the observed pattern. In contrast to abundances, the mean biomass of the bird assemblages decreased with increasing elevation. Our results show that montane bird species maintain dense populations which compensate for the decreased available area near the top of the mountain. PeerJ Inc. 2020-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7457928/ /pubmed/32923179 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9727 Text en ©2020 Sam and Koane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Sam, Katerina
Koane, Bonny
Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title_full Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title_fullStr Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title_full_unstemmed Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title_short Biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea
title_sort biomass, abundances, and abundance and geographical range size relationship of birds along a rainforest elevational gradient in papua new guinea
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923179
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9727
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