Bird communities of human inhabited and uninhabited riparian forests in the Middle Paraná River, Argentina

Abstract

The riparian forests in the Middle Paraná River are places frequently used for the construction of human housings. However, the effects of these modifications on forest bird communities are unknown. We compared bird communities of human inhabited and uninhabited riparian forests in order to assess possible changes. We carried out 60 point counts, 30 in inhabited forests and 30 in uninhabited forests. We evaluated species richness, abundance, evenness and diversity between both types of forests. We recorded 60 species and 591 individuals in uninhabited forests, and 53 species and 646 individuals in inhabited forests. We did not detect significant differences in richness and diversity. Bird abundance was significantly higher in inhabited forests. These results could be related with the composition of the communities: they have few forest species with respect to non-forest or generalist species. The variables we studied could not be reflecting environmental changes, or sample size could be insufficient to detect the differences. The relative low impact that isolated housings produce could be not significant for bird communities with respect to other local disturbances. Other factors, such as floods and seasonality could have also influence on our results. Recorded differences in the abundance of some species of forest and human habitats showed that changes at the specific level should be studied.