Widespread extinction debts and colonization credits in United States breeding bird communities

Species extinctions and colonizations in response to land cover change often occur with time lags rather than instantaneously, leading to extinction debts and colonization credits. These debts and credits can lead to erroneous predictions of future biodiversity. Recent attempts to measure debts and credits have been limited to small geographical areas and have not considered multiple land cover types, or the directionality of land cover change. Here we quantify the relative contribution of past and current landscapes on the current effective number of species of 2,880 US bird communities, explicitly measuring the response of biodiversity to increases and decreases in five land cover types. We find that the current effective number of species is still largely explained by the past landscape composition (legacy effect), depending on the type, magnitude and directionality of recent land cover change. This legacy effect leads to widespread extinction debts and colonization credits. Specifically, we reveal debts across 52% of the United States, particularly in recently urbanized areas, and colonization credits in the remaining 48%, which are primarily associated with grassland decrease. We conclude that biodiversity policy targets risk becoming rapidly obsolete unless past landscapes are considered and debts and credits accounted for.