Blue Tit

Distance sampling surveys are used for a long-term monitoring programme of biodiversity of British breeding birds.

Biodiversity of the breeding bird communities of Britain

The British breeding bird communities, represented in the mural by the great spotted woodpecker, robin and blue tit, have shown changes in recent decades, in response to climate change, changes in land use and management, and other changes in the environment. At St Andrews, we have developed methods for quantifying these temporal changes, and how they vary spatially, through biodiversity measures. Some measures allow us to assess whether the biodiversity of a community is increasing or decreasing, and whether the rate of change is accelerating or slowing down. Other measures allow us to quantify turnover - the rate at which some species are being replaced by others, as occurs for example when generalist species increase at the expense of specialist species.