Bird communities’ responses to human-modified landscapes in the southern Anhui Mountainous Area

Conversion of natural environments to human-modified landscapes is continuing at an unprecedented rate, exerting fundamental influences on global biodiversity. Understanding how wildlife communities respond to landscape modifications is critical to improve biodiversity conservation in human-dominated landscapes. In this study, we surveyed bird communities in three common habitats (i.e., farmland, village, and forest) in the southern Anhui Mountainous Area during summer (August 2019) and winter (December 2020). The diversity metrics and species compositions of the avian communities were compared among the habitats, and the effects of land use composition in these habitats were tested. During the field surveys, we recorded 7599 birds of 120 species along 45 line transects of 1 ​km in length. The land use compositions differed among habitats, and land use diversity was the highest in villages and lowest in forests. The species richness and bird abundance in the two human-dominated habitats (i.e., farmland and village) were higher than those in forest in both seasons. Bird species composition also differed across habitat types in both seasons. Bird species feeding on vertebrates, fish and carrion, and species feeding on plants and seeds were mainly found in habitats with less construction lands and lower land use diversity, while omnivorous species and species feeding on fruits and nectar or on invertebrates were less affected by these two variables. The indicator species analysis showed that most species associated with forest feed on invertebrates, while species feeding on plants and seeds were more correlated with farmland and village. The results indicated that the conversion of natural habitats to human-dominated landscapes has pronounced impacts on bird communities in the study area. Human-dominated habitats harboured more avian species that deserve conservation attention. Meanwhile, bird conservations should not be relaxed in forests because there were more than 20 species that had a high specificity for forests.