Functional diversity of avian communities increases with canopy height: From individual behavior to continental‐scale patterns

Vegetation complexity is an important predictor of animal species diversity. Specifically, taller vegetation should provide more potential ecological niches and thus harbor communities with higher species richness and functional diversity (FD). Resource use behavior is an especially important functional trait because it links species to their resource base with direct relevance to niche partitioning. However, it is unclear how exactly the diversity of resource use behavior changes with vegetation complexity. To address this question, we studied avian FD in relation to vegetation complexity along a continental‐scale vegetation gradient. We quantified foraging behavior of passerine birds in terms of foraging method and substrate use at 21 sites (63 transects) spanning 3,000 km of woodlands and forests in Australia. We also quantified vegetation structure on 630 sampling points at the same sites. Additionally, we measured morphological traits for all 111 observed species in museum collections. We calculated individual‐based, abundance‐weighted FD in morphology and foraging behavior and related it to species richness and vegetation complexity (indexed by canopy height) using structural equation modeling, rarefaction analyses, and distance‐based metrics. FD of morphology and foraging methods was best predicted by species richness. However, FD of substrate use was best predicted by canopy height (ranging 10–30 m), but only when substrates were categorized with fine resolution (17 categories), not when categorized coarsely (8 categories). These results suggest that, first, FD might increase with vegetation complexity independently of species richness, but whether it does so depends on the studied functional trait. Second, patterns found might be shaped by how finely we categorize functional traits. More complex vegetation provided larger "ecological space" with more resources, allowing the coexistence of more species with disproportionately more diverse foraging substrate use. We suggest that the latter pattern was driven by nonrandom accumulation of functionally distinct species with increasing canopy height.