Ecological and behavioural effects of habitat fragmentation on forest birds

This study examines the potential effects of habitat fragmentation on populations and communities of forest birds. It specifically examines the effects it exerts on the behaviour and the ecology of individual birds. It investigates how interactions with predators, prey and competitors change with the size and the degree of isolation of forest fragments and how this affects the condition, the survival and the reproduction of individual birds.; The effects of habitat fragmentation on species composition within forest fragments could be assessed in different seasons (winter vs. spring) with the same result. Overall nest predation did not vary with forest size, distance from the edge and time period. However, the effect of habitat fragmentation on nest predation depended on the composition of the local predator community.; There was no evidence to suggest that foraging niches of forest birds are strongly affected by the changes (in habitat and/or community structure) associated with fragmentation, and that winter foraging niches of small insectivorous birds (necessarily) expands in the absence of close competitors in islands-like situations. Nothing suggests also that nutritional condition in winter, and provisioning rates and breeding success in spring, were suboptimal in small fragments compared to a nearby large forest.