Birds in the Biobío Region (Chile): their richness, composition, and distribution

Abstract

The Biobío Region is part of the “Chilean winter rainfall-Valdivian forests” biodiversity “hotspot” and is characterized by having a high rate of both endemism and habitat loss and fragmentation. Although birds make it possible to monitor these realities, in addition to the effects that Global Climate Change (GCC) has on their habitats, their knowledge is still scarce both in the Biobío Region and in Chile. A regional inventory would be costly on time, budget, and personnel. We evaluated the representativeness and completeness of a regional inventory obtained from bird records of ebird-Chile. The observed specific richness was 226 species and the expected richness was 249 species for the region. We used the Clench parametric model and the non-parametric models: Chao1, iChao1, ACE, First Order Jackknife, and Second-Order Jackknife for all estimations. We identified 37 threatened species, 6 endemic species, and 3 rare species. We found a biased distribution of sampling efforts and species diversity to coastal communities. Greater attention and effort should be put into the study and conservation of the richness of the higher taxa of birds because they represent greater phylogenetic diversity. Studies on birds in the Biobío Region can use sources of information such as eBird-Chile to bridge the knowledge gap on birds, and the information obtained can be expressed in terms that can be integrated into land-use planning to advance towards the management and conservation of birds.