Tropical forests are facing unprecedented pressure from deforestation, forest conversion and other types of exploitation. More than 70% of endangered bird species inhabit these ecosystems, highlighting their critical importance for avian biodiversity. Birds are the flagship group of many conservation efforts, performing key ecosystem services, while functioning as reliable indicators of land use change. Therefore, the dire conservations status of many bird species highlights the impending ecological disaster stemming from land use change-related forest loss and fragmentation. Despite this urgent need for action, our understanding of key drivers behind bird response to various types of human disturbances is limited. There is a lack of pantropical syntheses, while many regions remain understudied. For example, African forests are increasingly threatened by fragmentation and conversion, but feature very little research on birds and forest disturbances. More research is needed to identify key aspects driving adaptability and resilience of tropical bird communities to land use change. We welcome together scientists that attempt to address this shortage in knowledge, in order to make tropical ecology science pantropically inclusive. We bring specialists on avian ecology that identify global drivers of bird response to disturbances, and we connect them with proponents of research in tropical Africa, Neotropics, Australasia and other regions facing pressure from land use change. Bird functional ecology is spearheading tropical research into the effect of disturbances on forest ecosystems. Trait-based understanding of land use change impacts on biodiversity is the key to preserving resilience and adaptability of tropical forest ecosystems through effective conservation. That is why our symposium features the world´s leading scientists in functional trait ecology of birds, using their knowledge to identify trait-based assemblage rules in bird populations in any tropical regions. The symposium also focuses on how functional traits alter bird ecology and behaviour in disturbed forests, and on how land-use changes influence food-webs involving tropical forest birds. By bringing together scientists and stakeholders from multiple tropical regions, we facilitate an improved understanding of bird disturbance ecology, and thus mitigating the biodiversity crisis in tropical forests.