The link between dispersal traits and patterns of community assembly remains a frontier in understanding how vertebrate communities persist in fragmented landscapes. Using experimental release trials and intensive field surveys of bird communities in fragmented forests of the Peruvian and Colombian Andes, we demonstrate that morphological traits related to movement (1) predict experimental flight performance and (2) exhibit dispersal-mediated environmental filtering at the community scale. After correcting for body size, four traits hypothesized to influence flight ability (wing length, wing pointedness, wing loading, and eye size) predicted distance flown across a hostile experimental landscape, with successful species having significantly longer pointed wings, carrying less mass per unit wing area (i.e., lower wing loading), and having smaller eyes. Species with larger eyes also displayed increased flight latency, potentially due to disability glare. At the community scale we detected a gradient of dispersal-mediated environmental filtering in fragments compared to reference forest within the same landscape, with relative differences in trait values explained by the temporal and spatial extent of patch isolation. In the Colombian landscape where fragments had been isolated for > 60 years, communities were filtered for species with long and narrow wings and small eyes, especially within the most spatially isolated fragments. We observed the opposite pattern in the more recently fragmented Peruvian landscape (15-30 years): communities within fragments tended to have shorter and more rounded wings compared to those in nearby contiguous forests, suggesting that dispersal-limited species accumulate in the initial years following patch isolation due to “restricted dispersal” and represent an extinction debt yet to be paid. Our results (1) experimentally validate the use of morphological traits as proxies for movement ability in fragmented landscapes, (2) demonstrate that visual acuity functions as a novel dimension of dispersal limitation, and (3) quantify how the spatial and temporal components of patch isolation produce a gradient in dispersal-mediated environmental filtering and extinction debt for communities inhabiting fragments.

The data consists of two sections. Users are asked to read the associated publication for details.

1. Behavioral data from experimental release trials conducted in the field in Peru on cloud forest bird species. Briefly, forest birds were captured with mist nets and released towards the forest across the pasture to assess interspecific variation in flight ability. Morphological predictors of flight performance (wing and eye dimensions) were based entirely on field measurements of birds in the hand. Processing: The attached data gives sample sizes and average species-specific values of flight performance metrics and morphological traits. 

2. Community data from intensive field surveys of bird communities in the Andes of Peru and Colombia at sites located in contiguous mature forests and forest fragments. The Peru data were collected by the authors using point count and flock survey protocols (see Ausprey et al. 2022). The Colombia data were collected by Luis Miguel Renjifo using similar protocols (see Renjifo 2001). The Peru morphological data (wings and eyes) were mostly derived from field measurements of birds in and supplemented with measurements of museum specimens. The Colombia morphological data were extracted from the AVONET database (Tobias et al. 2022) and a previously published paper on avian eye size variation (Ausprey 2021). Processing: The attached data gives site-specific community medians for wing and eye metrics.