Journal Article

Turnover of breeding bird communities on islands in an inundated lake

Pimm, Stuart L., Ding, Ping, Russell, Gareth J., Si, Xingfeng

2014

Overview

Aim: MacArthur and Wilson's theory of island biogeography proposes that the rate at which species colonize an island depends on the island's isolation (distance effect), whereas the local extinction rate depends on its area (area effect). Alternative hypotheses recognize that area can affect the colonization rate (target effect) and that isolation can affect the extinction rate (rescue effect) and, moreover, that these relationships may dominate. We quantify these relationships and associated turnover rates and incidence using long-term counts of breeding bird communities on islands in an inundated lake. Location: Thousand Island Lake, China. Methods: We assessed the occupancy and behaviour of breeding birds on 37 islands from 2007 to 2012. We estimated the effects of area, isolation and other biogeographical parameters on the frequencies of colonization and extinction events using multivariate logistic regression. We then extended these results to derived properties such as species turnover rates and incidence. Results: Extinction rates decreased and colonization rates increased on larger islands. Isolation had no significant effect on colonization or extinction rates. Islands had high species turnover overall, and turnover rates followed the same pattern as extinction rates with different areas and isolations. Pool turnover, which controls for the number of species in the pool, was higher on large islands. Species richness also increased with area. Our study of bird communities supported area and target effects, but not distance and rescue effects. Main conclusions: Island area was a better predictor of colonization and extinction than isolation, probably because of the relatively small scale (c.580 km²) and homogeneous vegetation structure of our research system, and the strong dispersal ability of birds. We conclude that the differences between our observations and theoretical predictions, or results from other studies that measured colonization and extinction directly, are consistent with the particular biogeography of these islands.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,John Wiley & Sons Ltd,Blackwell,Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subject: Animal and plant ecology / Animal communities / Animal ecology / Animal, plant and microbial ecology / Aquatic communities / Aves / Biogeography / Biological and medical sciences / Birds / breeding / Breeding bird / China / Colonization / connectivity / Conservation biology / extinction / Fresh water ecosystems / Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology / General aspects / island biogeography / Islands / Lakes / land bridge / Mass extinctions / model selection / prediction / regression analysis / rescue effect / Species diversity / Species extinction / Species richness / Synecology / target effect / Temporal turnover / Thousand Island Lake / vegetation structure / Vertebrates: general zoology, morphology, phylogeny, systematics, cytogenetics, geographical distribution / Waterfowl