That's the situation in places such as Africa, which have tremendous biodiversity but spotty ecological baseline data.

So University of Utah researchers set out to assess the status of bird species in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains through six years' worth of bird banding efforts at five sites.

The sites spanned more than a mile of vertical elevation on the tropical mountain slopes. The highest species richness, they found, was near the lowest and intermediate elevation stations, and six species were found at elevations higher than they'd been seen before.

The study, the authors write, establishes baseline observations for tropical birds in East Africa, filling in an important data gap for monitoring biodiversity and tropical ecosystem health in a warming world.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Utah. Original written by Paul Gabrielsen. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Kyle D Kittelberger, Montague H C Neate-Clegg, Evan R Buechley, Çağan Hakkı Şekercioğlu. Community characteristics of forest understory birds along an elevational gradient in the Horn of Africa: A multi-year baseline. Ornithological Applications, 2021; DOI: 10.1093/ornithapp/duab009