A near half-century of temporal change in different facets of avian diversity

Assessments of spatial patterns of biodiversity change are essential to detect a signature of anthropogenic impacts, inform monitoring and conservation programs, and evaluate implications of biodiversity loss to humans. While taxonomic diversity (TD) is the most commonly assessed attribute of biodiversity, it misses the potential functional or phylogenetic implications of species losses or gains for ecosystems. Functional diversity (FD) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) are able to capture these important trait-based and phylogenetic attributes of species, but their changes have to date only been evaluated over limited spatial and temporal extents. Employing a novel framework for addressing detectability, we here comprehensively assess a near half-century of changes in local TD, FD, and PD of breeding birds across much of North America to examine levels of congruency in changes among these biodiversity facets and their variation across spatial and environmental gradients. Time-series analysis showed significant and continuous increases in all three biodiversity attributes until ca. 2000, followed by a slow decline since. Comparison of avian diversity at the beginning and end of the temporal series revealed net increase in TD, FD, and PD, but changes in TD were larger than those in FD and PD, suggesting increasing biotic homogenization of avian assemblages throughout the United States. Changes were greatest at high elevations and latitudes - consistent with purported effects of ongoing climate change on biodiversity. Our findings highlight the potential of combining new types of data with novel statistical models to enable a more integrative monitoring and assessment of the multiple facets of biodiversity.