In the context of global degradation and loss of natural wetlands, waterbirds have been increasingly using artificial wetlands as alternative habitats. However, waterbirds are facing various threats in these artificial wetlands, due to dramatic environmental changes induced by anthropogenic activities. Exploring the effects of these changes on the temporal dynamics of the waterbird communities can help understand how waterbirds adapt to environmental changes and thus formulate effective management and conservation plans. In this study, we carried out field surveys on waterbirds and environmental factors across 20 subsidence wetlands created by underground coal mining in the Huainan coal mining area in the breeding seasons of 2016 and 2021. We predicted that the waterbird assemblages (i.e., number of individuals, species richness, Shannon–Wiener diversity, Pielou evenness and species composition) differed between the two years, and that these differences were correlated with the temporal changes in environmental factors. Across the surveyed wetlands, we recorded 26 waterbird species in 2016 and 23 in 2021. For individual wetlands, the number of waterbird individuals and species richness increased by 71.6% and 20.1%, respectively, over the five years, with no changes in Shannon–Wiener diversity and Pielou evenness. The overall increase in the number of bird individuals was mainly caused by an increase in vegetation gleaners and gulls that adapt well to anthropogenic activities. The species composition was significantly different between the two years, which was mainly caused by changes in the number of individuals of dominant species under influence of changes in human activities. For most wetlands, the temporal pairwise β-diversities could be explained by species turnover rather than nestedness, probably due to high mobility of waterbird species and dramatic changes in local environments. Our study suggests that waterbird communities could respond to environmental changes in subsidence wetlands, providing important implications for waterbird conservation in human-dominated artificial wetlands.

Conversion of natural environments to human-modified landscapes is continuing at an unprecedented rate, exerting fundamental influences on global biodiversity. Understanding how wildlife communities respond to landscape modifications is critical to improve biodiversity conservation in human-dominated landscapes. In this study, we surveyed bird communities in three common habitats (i.e., farmland, village, and forest) in the southern Anhui Mountainous Area during summer (August 2019) and winter (December 2020). The diversity metrics and species compositions of the avian communities were compared among the habitats, and the effects of land use composition in these habitats were tested. During the field surveys, we recorded 7599 birds of 120 species along 45 line transects of 1 ​km in length. The land use compositions differed among habitats, and land use diversity was the highest in villages and lowest in forests. The species richness and bird abundance in the two human-dominated habitats (i.e., farmland and village) were higher than those in forest in both seasons. Bird species composition also differed across habitat types in both seasons. Bird species feeding on vertebrates, fish and carrion, and species feeding on plants and seeds were mainly found in habitats with less construction lands and lower land use diversity, while omnivorous species and species feeding on fruits and nectar or on invertebrates were less affected by these two variables. The indicator species analysis showed that most species associated with forest feed on invertebrates, while species feeding on plants and seeds were more correlated with farmland and village. The results indicated that the conversion of natural habitats to human-dominated landscapes has pronounced impacts on bird communities in the study area. Human-dominated habitats harboured more avian species that deserve conservation attention. Meanwhile, bird conservations should not be relaxed in forests because there were more than 20 species that had a high specificity for forests.