For birds, the type of resources consumed in the diet of each species (e.g. seeds, fruits, leaves, invertebrates, vertebrates), body mass (which indicates the amount of food required for a given individual), beak shape (related to the type of food consumed), as well as the foraging stratum (a place to search for food, such as the ground or canopy of a forest), are examples of traits often used to measure functional diversity. When describing bird species through their functional attributes, we can classify and compare groups of species by their “diversity of functions” in a given location or region. To do that, ecological information like the ones mentioned above are combined with the species occurrence data to calculate the functional diversity. In this way, we can assess, for example, the impact of environmental changes in different bird communities (click here to understand the concept of communities in ecology).

          Together with other researchers from the Biosciences Institute of the Universidade Federal do Pará – UFPA, I evaluated the impact of the oil palm plantation (Elaeis guineensis) on the functional diversity of birds in the municipality of Tailândia, northeastern state Pará, Brazilian Amazon. Palm oil has been widely used in the food and cosmetics industry, and also in the production of biodiesel. We verified what are the ecological characteristics that make a bird more or less prone to disappear or occupy an area if the forest is replaced by an oil palm monoculture.