Vulnerability to habitat fragmentation: Habitat fragmentation caused by human activities has consequences for the distribution and movement of organisms. Betts et al. present a global analysis of how exposure to habitat fragmentation affects the composition of ecological communities (see the Perspective by Hargreaves). In a dataset consisting of 4489 animal species, regions that historically experienced little disturbance tended to harbor a higher proportion of species vulnerable to fragmentation. Species in more frequently disturbed regions were more resilient. High-latitude areas historically experienced more disturbance and harbor more resilient species, which suggests that extinction has removed fragmentation-sensitive species. Thus, conservation efforts to limit fragmentation are particularly important in the tropics. Science , this issue p. 1236 ; see also p. 1196

Habitat loss is the dominant threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in terrestrial environments. In this study, we used an a priori classification of bird species based on their dependence on native forest habitats (forest-specialist and habitat generalists) and specific food resources (frugivores and insectivores) to evaluate their responses to forest cover reduction in landscapes in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. From the patch-landscapes approach, we delimited 40 forest sites, and quantified the percentage of native forest within a 2 km radius around the center of each site (from 6 - 85%). At each site, we sampled birds using the point-count method. We used a null model, a generalized linear model and a four-parameter logistic model to evaluate the relationship between richness and abundance of the bird groups and the native forest amount. A piecewise model was then used to determine the threshold value for bird groups that showed nonlinear responses. The richness and abundance of the bird community as a whole were not affected by changes in forest cover in this region. However, a decrease in forest cover had a negative effect on diversity of forest-specialist, frugivorous and insectivorous birds, and a positive effect on generalist birds. The species richness and abundance of all ecological groups were nonlinearly related to forest reduction and showed similar threshold values, i.e., there were abrupt changes in individuals and species numbers when forest amount was less than approximately 50%. Forest sites within landscapes with forest cover that was less than 50% contained a different bird species composition than more extensively forested sites and had fewer forest-specialist species and higher beta-diversity. Our study demonstrated the pervasive effect of forest reduction on bird communities in one of the most important hotspots for bird conservation and shows that many vulnerable species require extensive forest cover to persist.

Summary: Biodiversity maintenance in human‐altered landscapes (HALs) depends on the species turnover among localities, but the patterns and determinants of β‐diversity in HALs are poorly known. In fact, declines, increases and neutral shifts in β‐diversity have all been documented, depending on the landscape, ecological group and spatial scale of analysis. We shed some light on this controversy by assessing the patterns and predictors of bird β‐diversity across multiple spatial scales considering forest specialist and habitat generalist bird assemblages. We surveyed birds from 144 point counts in 36 different forest sites across two landscapes with different amount of forest cover in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. We analysed β‐diversity among points, among sites and between landscapes with multiplicative diversity partitioning of Hill numbers. We tested whether β‐diversity among points was related to within‐site variations in vegetation structure, and whether β‐diversity among sites was related to site location and/or to differences among sites in vegetation structure and landscape composition (i.e. per cent forest and pasture cover surrounding each site). β‐diversity between landscapes was lower than among sites and among points in both bird assemblages. In forest specialist birds, the landscape with less forest cover showed the highest β‐diversity among sites (bird differentiation among sites), but generalist birds showed the opposite pattern. At the local scale, however, the less forested landscape showed the lowest β‐diversity among points (bird homogenization within sites), independently of the bird assemblage. β‐diversity among points was weakly related to vegetation structure, but higher β‐diversity values were recorded among sites that were more isolated from each other, and among sites with higher differences in landscape composition, particularly in the less forested landscape. Our findings indicate that patterns of bird β‐diversity vary across scales and are strongly related to landscape composition. Bird assemblages are shaped by both environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, particularly in less forested landscapes. Conservation and management strategies should therefore prevent deforestation in this biodiversity hotspot.

Global biodiversity is increasingly threatened by land‐use change, but the direct and indirect drivers of species diversity in human‐modified tropical landscapes are poorly known. Forest‐dependent species are expected to be particularly sensitive to changes in landscape composition (e.g., forest loss) and configuration (e.g., increase of forest edges), both directly and indirectly through cascading landscape effects on local patterns of forest structure and resource availability. In contrast, non‐forest‐dependent species are probably more strongly related to landscape changes than to local forest patterns, as these species are able to use resources not only from the forest, but also from other landscape elements over larger spatial scales. We tested these hypotheses using structural equation modeling. In particular, we sampled 20 landscapes (115 ha each) from the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest to assess the effect of landscape‐scale forest cover and amount of forest edges on the diversity of frugivorous birds, both directly and indirectly through the effect that these landscape variables may have on vegetation complexity and fruit biomass. We separately assessed the response of forest‐dependent and non‐forest‐dependent frugivores to infer potential mechanisms underlying bird assemblages in fragmented landscapes. The diversity of forest‐dependent birds mainly decreased with the simplification of vegetation complexity in more deforested landscapes, but increased with increasing fruit biomass in more forested landscapes (indirect effects). Both patterns were significant, thus supporting a strong bottom‐up control, i.e., local habitat simplification and resource scarcity in highly deforested landscapes limits the maintenance of forest‐dependent birds. Conversely, but as expected, non‐forest‐dependent birds were more strongly and directly related to landscape‐scale patterns. In particular, landscapes with higher forest edge amount showed higher bird species diversity, probably because the increasing length of ecotones and interspersion/juxtaposition of different habitat types in landscapes with more forest edges can increase resource availability and foraging efficiency of non‐forest‐dependent birds. As the seed dispersal services offered by forest‐dependent species cannot be ecologically compensated for by the proliferation of non‐forest‐dependent species, preventing forest loss is imperative to maintain forest‐dependent birds and forest regeneration in this vanishing biodiversity hotspot.