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Habitat loss and degradation is the most pervasive threat to tropical biodiversity worldwide. Amazonia sits at the frontline of efforts to both improve the productivity of tropical agriculture and prevent the loss of biodiversity. To date our understanding of the biodiversity impacts of agricultural expansion in Amazonia is restricted to findings from small scale studies that typically assess the importance of a limited number of land-use types. Here we investigate local and landscape-scale responses of Amazonian avian assemblages to land-cover changes across a gradient of land-use intensity ranging from undisturbed primary forest to mechanised agriculture in 36 drainage catchments distributed across two large regions of the eastern Brazilian Amazon. We found that species richness of forest-associated birds declined progressively along this gradient, accompanied by marked shifts in assemblage composition. We found …