NeotropicalScience
  • RESEARCH
    • Fear Based Niche Shift
    • Cashu Recensus
    • Antbirds Mimic Antshrikes
    • Deconstructing Fear
    • Neomorphus and mixed flocks
    • Hawk-eagle Hunting a Primate
    • Primate and Bird Communication
    • Alarm Eavesdropping by Sentinel Species
    • Population Genetics of U. stansburiana
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    • Eliseo Parra
    • Ricky Gottschalk
    • Joseph See
    • Devante Deschwanden
    • Micah Riegner
    • Ari Martinez
  • GEAR

36 years later

the recensus of 
the Cashu Plot

Documenting patterns of spatiotemporal change in hyper-diverse communities remains a challenge for tropical ecology yet is increasingly urgent as some long-term studies have shown major declines in bird communities in undisturbed sites.
Picture

In 1982, a team of pioneering biologists quantified the structure and organisation of the bird community in a 97-ha. plot in rainforest of southeastern Peru.


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We revisited the same plot in 2018 using the same methodologies as the original study to evaluate community-wide changes.

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Contrary to longitudinal studies of other neotropical bird communities (Tiputini, Manaus, and Panama), we found little change in community structure and organisation, with increases in 5, decreases in 2 and no change in 7 foraging guilds. 
Picture
Kernel density estimates of 6 example species showing their spatial distributions in 1982 (left) compared to 2018
Graph on the right summarizes the overall observed correlation coefficient of more than 100 KDEs compared to a null distribution, suggesting a much higher overlap in spatial distribution than expected by chance.
This apparent stability suggests that large forest reserves such as the Manu National Park, possibly due to regional topographical influences on precipitation, still provide the conditions for establishing refugia from at least some of the effects of global change on bird communities.
Read the published manuscript online here
or download the pdf
martinezetal2023.pdf
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File Type: pdf
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 Logo art by M. Riegner, design E. Parra © COPYRIGHT 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • RESEARCH
    • Fear Based Niche Shift
    • Cashu Recensus
    • Antbirds Mimic Antshrikes
    • Deconstructing Fear
    • Neomorphus and mixed flocks
    • Hawk-eagle Hunting a Primate
    • Primate and Bird Communication
    • Alarm Eavesdropping by Sentinel Species
    • Population Genetics of U. stansburiana
  • ASSISTANT INFORMATION
    • Internships and Resources
    • Field Sites >
      • Las Piedras
      • Pantiacolla
      • Amazon Victory
    • Travel and Logistics
    • Equipment
    • Protocols
    • Vocalizations
  • Media Projects
    • Outreach
    • rainforest consortium
  • People
    • Eliseo Parra
    • Ricky Gottschalk
    • Joseph See
    • Devante Deschwanden
    • Micah Riegner
    • Ari Martinez
  • GEAR