Study highlights critical impact of urbanization on avian communities in the Afrotropics

Urbanization negatively affects biodiversity worldwide, making associations between urbanization and avian communities an imperative study. The Head IITA of Forest Center, Adewale Awoyemi, recently published his third PhD paper, alongside other authors, reporting how urbanization affects bird taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity in the Afrotropics.

The authors compared bird populations in urban and non-urban areas from two vegetation zones in Nigeria: rainforest (Auchi, Calabar, Ibadan, and Lagos) and savannah (Birnin Kebbi, Dutse, Gombe, and Jos). They sampled birds and collected landscape attributes (such as pedestrians or green cover) both during the dry (November to January) and wet seasons (August to September), collecting data from 400-point count stations across the country.

They recorded 8,738 birds of 237 species in their study. Of the eight studied cities, Jos recorded the highest number of bird species in the urban habitat during the dry season, while Ibadan registered the highest number of bird species during the wet season. They found that the impacts of urbanization on birds are more severe in rainforests than in savannahs.

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