10.6084/m9.figshare.5008382.v1 Rachakonda Sreekar Rachakonda Sreekar Richard Corlett Richard Corlett Salindra Dayananda Salindra Dayananda Uromi Manage Goodale Uromi Manage Goodale Adam Kilpatrick Adam Kilpatrick Sarath W. Kotagama Sarath W. Kotagama Lian Pin Koh Lian Pin Koh Eben Goodale Eben Goodale Supplementary Material from Horizontal and vertical species turnover in tropical birds in habitats with differing land use The Royal Society 2017 beta diversity climate change community assembly deforestation distance decay 2017-05-16 09:10:50 Journal contribution https://rs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Supplementary_Material_from_Horizontal_and_vertical_species_turnover_in_tropical_birds_in_habitats_with_differing_land_use/5008382 Large tracts of tropical rainforests are being converted into intensive agricultural lands. Such anthropogenic disturbances are known to reduce species turnover across horizontal distances. But it is not known if they can also reduce species turnover across vertical distances (elevation), which have steeper climatic differences. We measured turnover in birds across horizontal and vertical sampling transects in three land-use types of Sri Lanka: protected forest, reserve buffer and intensive-agriculture, from 90 to 2100 m a.s.l. Bird turnover rates across horizontal distances were similar across all habitats, and much less than vertical turnover rates. Vertical turnover rates were not similar across habitats. Forest had higher turnover rates than the other two habitats for all bird species. Buffer and intensive-agriculture had similar turnover rates, even though buffer habitats were situated at the forest edge. Therefore, our results demonstrate the crucial importance of conserving primary forest across the full elevational range available.