Using a citizen science database to understand biogeographical patterns of birds of the Atlantic Forest

The Atlantic Forest is one of the most important biodiversity hotspots. Birds are a good indicator of this situation, as this ecosystem holds a rich bird fauna, including more than 200 endemic species, and at the same time has one of the highest number of endangered birds of the world. It is also the Brazilian ecosystem in which birds have been more studied, although this knowledge is highly dispersed on the literature. In addition, during the last decade, the information gathered by Brazilian birders and shared on line in citizen science databases resulted in an unexpected increase in the knowledge about distribution of Atlantic Forest birds. I revisited all the literature available about Atlantic Forest species, as well as digital vouchers deposited at WikiAves and xeno-canto. The results were a comprehensive review of the species richness and composition of the Atlantic Forest bird fauna, as well as original information about the biogeographical patterns originated from the analyses of the large body of new information generated by citizen science. Results has shown that the Atlantic Forest avifauna is composed of 861 species, totaling 1035 taxons if considering the subspecies, grouped into 26 orders and 80 families. The Atlantic Forest avifauna is characterized by a high level of endemism, 213 species. On a biogeographical context, the results are indicating the necessity of review of the current Atlantic Forest considered limits, as showed by the records of endemic forest species in areas currently considered part of the Cerrado domain.