Distribuição de aves de sub-bosque em zonas ripárias e não ripárias em uma floresta urbana na Amazônia Central

Abstract

Description of distribution patterns of species and the mechanisms that generate them are essential to understanding the relationships between organisms and environmental gradients. Riparian zones are distinguished form non-riparian zones by topography, hydrological regimes, soil types and plant and animal communities. In central Amazônia, distinctive bird assemblages have been described in riparian an non-riparian zones. Negative effects as those produced by human disturbance interfere directly on the richness and abundance of birds in forests, mainly through changes in some components of vegetation, affecting the availability of food resources and microclimate conditions. A pattern often observed in areas with urban influence is the homogenization of communities resulting in communities of mostly generalist species after the extinction of specialist species. Thus, it is important to know if in a forest with a strong influence of urbanization, bird assemblages respond to environmental variation generated by the proximity to water courses, as observed in undisturbed forests. It is also important to know if edge effects generated by the urbanization process negatively affect the distribution of these bird communities locally. This study was conducted in an urban forest of about 600 hectares in the city of Manaus (AM) in which the campus of the Federal University of Amazonas - UFAM is found. The forest includes the university campus and is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, streets and urban areas with different uses. To characterize the avifauna of the understory in riparian and non- riparian zones we used the capture-recapture technique and mist-nets. We selected 20 sampling sites, with 10 riparian sites and 10 non- riparian sites. At each site we used a mist-net line (120m) activated for two consecutive days from 06:30h to 11:30h from July to November 2013. Birds were identified, measured, weighed and banded, except humming birds. We, captured 27 species of 12 families with a total of 118 individuals of which 9.3% were recaptures. We found a similar total abundance (T = -0.17 , df = 9 , p = 0.86 ) and species richness (T = -0.2641 , df = 9 , p = 0.79) in riparian and non-riparian sites. We also found that quantitative composition of bird assemblages was not different between riparian and non- riparian sites. However, when the effect of distance to the edge was included into the models we found a different pattern. The best model to explain the variation of biomass of birds, was the one with an interaction between the effect of the distance to the edge and the effect of environment (riparian and non-riparian) (AICweight = 0.716). Thus, according to this model there was a positive relationship between the bird biomass and the distance to the edge in riparian zones while the opposite pattern was observed in non-riparian zones. Regarding similarity between riparian and non-riparian zones, we observed a pattern of increasing similarity between pairs of riparian sites and non-riparian sites with decreasing distance to the forest edge, that is, pairs of riparian / non-riparian sites that are closer to the forest edge are more similar to each other than sites that are in the interior of the forest. We conclude that the edge effect generated by the negative influence of the urban matrix into the forest is the determining factor in increasing the similarity between riparian and non- riparian zones, thus leading to a community homogenization process.