Functional Traits on Cavity-nesting Birds in Subtropical Andean Forest: Response to Logging Activity and Comparing with American Temperate Forests

Abstract Logging causes changes in habitat structure, which can potentially lead to variations in taxonomic and functional richness of biodiversity. In this paper, we examined how logging in subtropical Andean forests has influenced taxonomic and functional diversity of cavity-nesting birds. We used point-counts to examine the effects of logging on taxonomic and functional traits of avian communities (Functional Richness, Functional evenness, Functional Divergence, and Community-weighted mean). We found that logging changes bird richness and abundance, although it had no effect on the functional response to the measured traits. The comparison of our results with those of temperate forests of Canada and Chile reveals differences in the functional richness, with a lower impact of logging on functional traits. We highlight the importance of including functional traits in the analyses, since the reduction in the species richness and abundance may not translate into functional changes within the ecosystem.