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Understory bird communities in Amazonian rainforest fragments: Species turnover through 25 years post-isolation in recovering landscapes

Inferences about species loss following habitat conversion are typically drawn from short-term surveys, which cannot reconstruct long-term temporal dynamics of extinction and colonization. A long-term view can be critical, however, to determine the stability of communities within fragments. Likewise, landscape dynamics must be considered, as second growth structure and overall forest cover contribute to processes in fragments. Here we examine bird communities in 11 Amazonian rainforest fragments of 1–100 ha, beginning before the fragments were isolated in the 1980s, and continuing through 2007.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020543