Environmental News Network - Forest Birds With Short, Round Wings More Sensitive to Habitat Fragmentation, OSU Study Shows

Details: By Oregon State University; 02.Jun

Tropical forest birds, which tend to have wings that are short and round relative to their body length and shape, are more sensitive to habitat fragmentation than the long, slender-winged species common in temperate forests, according to an international collaboration that included scientists from Oregon State University.

Cheryl Porter

Tropical forest birds, which tend to have wings that are short and round relative to their body length and shape, are more sensitive to habitat fragmentation than the long-, slender-winged species common in temperate forests, according to an international collaboration that included scientists from Oregon State University.

OSU’s Matt Betts and Christopher Wolf teamed with 14 other authors to analyze the wings of more than 1,000 species worldwide in a study led by Thomas Weeks of Imperial College London and published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The research builds on a 2019 study that was led by Betts and Wolf and published in Science. That paper had shown that the nearer a forest species lives to the equator, where animals evolved in environments that weren’t subject to large-scale habitat-altering events like fires and storms, the less well equipped the species is to adapt to current human-caused forest fragmentation.

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Forest Birds With Short, Round Wings More Sensitive to Habitat Fragmentation, OSU Study Shows