Globally abundant birds disproportionately inhabit anthropogenic environments

Abstract

AbstractResearch into biodiversity change predominantly focuses on rarity and declines, but many ecological processes are governed by abundant species. Analysing 3,146 terrestrial bird species across 5,454 field-sampled sites, we find that three times more species in the top quartile for global abundance are more likely to occur in ecosystems characterised by major human land-cover modification (croplands, plantation forest, urban areas and pasture), compared with species in the bottom quartile. The likelihood of inhabiting human-modified environments consistently increases with global abundance across species with different dietary requirements, whereas low abundance species tend to have increased probabilities of occurrence (within their ranges) in relatively unmodified environments. Our findings suggest that human modification of the Earth’s land surface has favoured ‘anthrophilic’ species able to thrive in widespread anthromes.One-Sentence SummaryThe world’s most abundant birds disproportionately inhabit croplands, plantation forests, urban areas and pastures.