Cultural functional groups associated with birds relate closely to avian ecological functions and services

The global rapid decline of ecological systems has highlighted the potential of ecosystem functions to drive conservation discourse. Ecosystem functions underpin important ecosystem services, and have been described for birds in South Africa based on measurable ecological traits (physiological, structural, behavioural, or phenological characteristics), as well as cultural functions (human preferences for morphological and behavioural traits). Understanding the spatial relationships between ecological and cultural functions can provide insight into the extent to which cultural services of birds are correlated with different ecological functions, and identify potential synergies in the distribution of cultural and ecological services. Here we show that when correcting for the effect of species richness and spatial autocorrelation on functional group richness, there is a clear correlation between avian cultural and ecological functional groups in South Africa (r = 0.6, t = 32.20, df = 1936, p < 0.05), suggesting that cultural functions are strongly correlated with ecologically relevant traits, despite their production being primarily mediated through human perception. This relationship was highly correlated in National Parks (r = 0.75, t = 14.95, df = 182, p < 0.05). For conservation initiatives that aim to maximise both ecosystem function and ecosystem service production, it is critical to identify and support synergies in the distribution of different functional groups to promote the production of multiple ecosystem services