Global bird study reveals declining ecosystem resilience - Cambridge University

Human-driven changes to landscapes worldwide are ‘thinning out’ the ecological services supplied by wild birds, eroding the functions that support stable and resilient ecosystems.

A new study has found land-use change is undermining ecosystem stability by reducing the functional diversity of bird communities.

Researchers have compiled data for nearly 3,700 bird species from 1,200 sites across the world. This reveals that habitat modification, such as urbanisation and agricultural expansion, reduces the number of species performing vital ecological roles including pollination, seed dispersal and predation.

In natural communities, these essential services are performed by multiple different species, a concept known as functional redundancy. Redundancy provides crucial ‘insurance’ for ecosystems, offering back-up when individual species decline or are lost altogether. When ecosystems contain many species performing similar ecological roles, they are more resilient to disturbance.

The results are published in the journal Nature