the impact of plantation establishment on avian ecological and functional diversity

conversion of tropical and subtropical forest to plantation agriculture poses a significant threat to madagascar’s unique biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, yet little research effort has been dedicated to studying its effects. by comparing avian diversity, community composition, and functional diversity metrics between secondary forest and plantation habitats in the sambirano ecoregion of madagascar, this study simultaneously explored the impact of plantation establishment on forest communities and the conservation value of lowintensity, closedcanopy fruit plantations. plantation habitats were found to maintain ecologically and functionally rich assemblages of birds. however, these assemblages were highly modified compared to the secondary forest and with significantly lower functional evenness. closedcanopy plantations acted as a middle ground between opencanopy plantation and secondary forest. these results suggest that preservation of secondary forest will be essential to conservation efforts, but closedcanopy plantation may present a viable compromise between conservation and human development objectives.