Structural heterogeneity increases diversity of non-breeding grassland birds

By T. Hovick, R. D. Elmore, S. Fuhlendorf. 2014

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Grassland birds have experienced greater population declines than any other guild of birds in North America, and yet we know little about habitat use and the affects of management during their non-breeding period on wintering grounds. The paucity of information on wintering grassland birds limits our ability to develop effective conservation strategies. We investigated habitat use by the winter bird community in grasslands with restored heterogeneity resulting from the interactive effects of fire and grazing. We used 500 m line transects distributed across patches (i.e., 24 months post disturbance) resulting from spring burning with growing season grazing (April-Sept) and quantified avian relative abundance, community structure, and probability of patch occupancy while accounting for imperfect detection. Grassland structure that resulted from the fire-grazing interaction created heterogeneity among patches that influenced avian habitat use during winter. Generalist birds such as the Savan...

Subfields: Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/acfcaf328fa163edf0574773d5a524e463e9f13b