Biotic homogenisation in bird communities leads to large-scale changes in species associations

AbstractAimThe impact of global change on biodiversity is commonly assessed in terms of changes in species distributions, community richness and community composition. Whether and how much associations between species, i.e. the degree of correlation in their spatial co-occurrence, are also changing is much less documented and mostly limited to local studies of ecological networks. In this study, we quantify changes in large-scale patterns of species associations in bird communities in relation to changes in species composition.LocationFrance.Time period2001-2017.Major taxa studiedCommon breeding birds.MethodsWe use network approaches to build three community-aggregated indices reflecting co…