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With increased rates of biodiversity loss and deforestation, ecological restoration has become a common practice worldwide. Despite this, metrics that are often used to quantify the success of biodiversity recovery display highly variable patterns depending upon the ecosystem being restored. The aims of this study were to investigate four biodiversity metrics - Chao2 species richness, rainforest-dependent species richness, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity - of bird assemblages occurring in connected remnant, fragmented remnant, old revegetation and young revegetation patches of critically endangered Australian lowland subtropical rainforest (LSR). The study also examined the influence of site-based vegetation and landscape attributes on bird assemblages in these patches. A combination of passive acoustic monitoring and bird surveys revealed 72 species across eight study sites. While no site-based vegetation attributes were significant predictors of avian diversity, high canopy cover had a strong positive relationship with rainforest-dependent species. The landscape context surrounding the patches had a significant relationship with three metrics, with vegetated vs. cleared land within a 200 and 500 m radius from the recording location being a significant positive predictor of species richness, rainforest-dependent species richness and functional diversity. A non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis showed that rainforest-dependent species were associated with sites connected to uncleared remnant vegetation in the broader landscape, while generalist species were associated with fragmented sites. The results of our study highlight the importance of ecological restoration for the recovery of bird assemblages in Australian LSR, as well as the variables that may influence fluctuations in species richness, rainforest-dependent species richness, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity within these communities. Future ecological restoration initiatives should aim to re-establish canopy cover and restore the connectivity and extent of LSR to facilitate the recolonisation of diverse bird assemblages that depend on this critically endangered ecosystem.
Borrow et al. (Wed,) studied this question.