Figure legends
Figure 1. Biplot depicting the first two axes of the RLQ multivariate analysis. Axes and scale are same for figures all plots which represent projections in the plane of the first two main components of (a) environmental variables, (b) species traits and (c) bird species.
Figure 2. Plots showing elevational trends of standard effect size of mean phylogenetic distance (SES_MPD) and standard effect size of mean functional distance (SES_MFD) of breeding river birds across the 68 river reaches in the western Himalaya.
Figure 3. Trends of community weighted mean (CWM) values for the three functional traits (body-mass, bill-size and tarsus length) of river-bird communities from different river basins plotted along the elevation gradient. The straight lines were fitted with a linear regression model and the R2 values and p values are listed in each figure.
Data accessibility statement: The data that support the findings of this study will be made openly available in open data repository (e.g “figshare”) upon acceptance of the manuscript.
Competing interest statement : The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Author contribution section: AS, NC, KR and SJO conceived the study. AS collected the data, KR facilitated the field permits, NC and AS analyzed the data. AS, SJO, KR and NC wrote the manuscript. All authors read and reviewed the final manuscript