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Forest management and human-induced environmental change impacts on biodiversity of forest bird assemblages are diverse and that specialist species are most heavily impacted.

Human-induced changes in the environment impact biodiversity worldwide. Specialist species are particularly sensitive to habitat degradation whereas generalist species may even benefit human actions. When specialists decline but generalist increase, species assemblages become more similar. This phenomenon, biotic homogenization, may have impact on ecosystem functioning, provisioning of ecosystem services and, therefore, human wellbeing.

Effects of forest management
In boreal zone, forest management is the most important factor changing native habitat. In his PhD thesis, Matti Häkkilä studied if logging and other human actions are homogenizing forest bird communities. He also studied if protected areas are able to maintain diversity. Besides species richness, biodiversity includes also diversity in functions and resource use of species as well as diversity in evolutionary history. In his thesis Häkkilä used several measures, including taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversities and specialization of species to study the impacts of human land use on bird communities.

- The results show that human-induced environmental change impacts on biodiversity of forest bird assemblages are diverse and that specialist species are most heavily impacted, Häkkilä says.

However, the responses of different diversity metrics on environmental change are not necessarily similar, and Häkkilä emphasizes the importance of using several measures of diversity simultaneously when biodiversity is measured.

- It was worth noticing that even in protected areas biodiversity was not safeguarded if the area was surrounded by intensively managed landscape. This, together with intensifying use of forest products, sets severe challenges to biodiversity conservation, he tells.

M.Sc. Matti Häkkilä defends his doctoral dissertation in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology "Biotic homogenization of forest bird communities under human influence" on the 1st of June 2018 at 12.00 in YAA303. Opponent Docent Aleksi Lehikoinen (University of Helsinki) and custos Professor Mikko Mönkkönen (Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥). The doctoral dissertation is held in English.

Additional information:

• Matti Häkkilä, matti.i.hakkila@jyu.fi
• Communications Officer Elina Leskinen, viestinta@jyu.fi, + 358 50 581 8351
• Link to thesis: