Urbanization is associated to a loss of phylogenetic diversity of birds in a medium size city on the Andes of Colombia, South America

Accelerated rates of urbanization negatively impact natural habitats and biodiversity. Studies of the effects of urbanization on fauna have emphasized taxonomic diversity, but this does not necessarily reflect effects on the evolutionary history of assemblages. Here, we study how urbanization influences phylogenetic diversity (PD) of bird assemblages in a small-medium city in the Central Andes of Colombia. Between 2016 and 2017, we performed bird surveys in 76 urban cells and 23 rural cells around the city. Then, we measured habitat characteristics (e.g. anthropogenic noise level, impervious and forested area) in sampled cells. PD of birds was between 1.37-1.42 MY higher in the rural than in the urban habitat. Within the urban habitat, the PD of birds reduces as impervious area and noise levels increase, while in the urban cells with most forested areas reach the highest PD values. Most of these differences and relationships disappear when we performed similar analysis controlling for differences in species richness. A low turnover of PD between assemblages of birds recorded inside Armenia and its less urbanized surroundings suggest green areas in the study area could mitigate the effects of urbanization in native fauna, and ameliorate connectivity between urban cells.