2026-10-07T18:18:44Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/31366249 2026-09-30T22:32:28Z category_24217 category_24235 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Chesapeake Bay Island Bird Audio, Transect Data, and Code for Nestedness/Modularity Analysis Anonymous_FirstName Anonymous_LastName (24717927) Community ecology (excl. invasive species ecology) Terrestrial ecology audio bird calls bird bird recordings island Chesapeake Bay island biogeography saltmarsh beach forest nestedness modularity island area isolation habitat type community metacommunity <p dir="ltr">Metacommunity structure has often been characterized in terms of the degree of nestedness (i.e., when each community’s composition is a subset of more speciose communities) and the degree of modularity (i.e., when species form discrete groups of co-occuring taxa that do not overlap). For a conservation biologist interested in preserving all species, a patch with the most species-rich community would be preserved under a nested paradigm, whereas a patch from each “species group” would be preserved under a modular paradigm. The islands of the Chesapeake Bay (USA) are home to a variety of breeding, migrating, and year-round bird populations. Our goal in this study was to test for island bird community nestedness and modularity as a function of three environmental gradients (area, degree of isolation, and habitat type). We sampled thirteen islands in the southern Chesapeake Bay, USA. Two presence-absence surveys were conducted for each island between June and August 2021. Islands were ranked by their characteristics, and each ranked list was evaluated for nestedness and modularity. Compared to a null model, ranking islands by area revealed strong nestedness, ranking by habitat type produced strong modularity, but ranking by degree of isolation did not yield any relationship with nestedness or modularity. Avian metacommunities on relatively small (<10,000 ha), nearshore (<10 km from the mainland) islands displayed a nested structure along a gradient of island size, and that even on these small islands, different habitat types produced measurably distinct community compositions. The implication is that to preserve biological diversity, one should protect the largest islands with a variety of habitat types.</p> 2026-09-30T22:32:28Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.31366249.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Chesapeake_Bay_Island_Bird_Audio_Transect_Data_and_Code_for_Nestedness_Modularity_Analysis/31366249 CC BY 4.0