Underlying factors promoting nestedness of bird assemblages in cays of the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, Cuba

Assessing the factors associated with nestedness patterns is a crucial aspect in studies of community structure. Bird assemblages in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago have a stable nested structure but the underlying influences have not been evaluated. We constructed a presence–absence data matrix based on a bird inventory obtained from 43 cays of this archipelago. We calculated nestedness using the NODF metric based on the overlap and decreasing fill and evaluated its significance by running 1,000 iterations of four null models. The matrix columns were rearranged to evaluate seven factors possibly related to the nestedness of bird communities. Bird assemblages exhibited a significant nested pattern (67.93) and all factors contributed (p < 0.01) to the nestedness patterns of bird communities. Habitat diversity and cay area and perimeter were the factors that contributed most to the nested structure. The nestedness pattern in the bird assemblages of the Jardines de la Reina archipelago was potentially caused by the interaction of selective extinction and differential colonization of species, with the former having a more remarkable effect.