Does variation in garden characteristics influence the conservation of birds in suburbia

By G. Daniels, J. Kirkpatrick. 2006

304 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Can enhancement of garden habitat for native birds have conservation benefits, or are garden bird assemblages determined by landscape and environmental characteristics? The relative roles of vegetation structure, floristics and other garden attributes, and environmental and landscape controls, on the abundance and richness of bird species in 214 back or front gardens in 10 suburbs of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, are addressed to answer this question. Birds were counted in each garden and the resources they utilized noted. Vascular plant species and other attributes of the garden were noted, along with rainfall, altitude, distance from natural vegetation, distance from the city and garden size. Garden floristics and bird assemblages were ordinated, and garden groups characterized by particular assemblages of birds identified. General linear modelling was used to determine the combinations of independent variables that best predicted the richness of birds and the abundance of individual bird species and groups of species. The models for bird richness, bird species and groups of bird species were highly individualistic. Although native birds showed a preference for native plants, they also utilized many exotic plants. Exotic birds largely utilized exotic plants. Variation in garden characteristics does substantially affect the nature of garden bird assemblages in Hobart, with weaker environmental and landscape influences. The fact that gardens can be designed and managed to favour particular species and species assemblages gives gardeners a potentially substantial role in the conservation of urban native avifauna.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b6961311b0f895fe3c3804f0598d54bc0a3203af

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Citations in the corpus

Avifaunal disarray due to a single despotic species (2013, background): “The noisy miner also occupies urban and suburban habitats, including inner city parks, suburban gardens and bushland remnants (Sewell & Catterall, 1998; French et al., 2005; Daniels & Kirkpatrick, 2006; Parsons et al., 2006; Ashley et al., 2009).”
Birds in Urban Ecosystems: Population Dynamics, Community Structure, Biodiversity, and Conservation (2015, background): “Because the vegetation is usually exotic, the increase in diversity is attributed to many human-commensal or alien species, whereas native vegetation allows, in some cases, a higher proportion of native species (Emlen, 1974; Mills et al., 1989; Chace and Walsh, 2006; Daniels and Kirkpatrick, 2006).”
Socio-Economics and Vegetation Change in Urban Ecosystems: Patterns in Space and Time (2009, background): “…2006; Jenerette and others 2007), control of air and water pollution (Randolph 2004), carbon storage (Nowak 1994), habitat provision (Vickery 1995; Daniels and Kirkpatrick 2006), and providing recreational opportunities (Miller 2006) and cultural and health benefits (Fuller and others 2007;…”
Garden bird feeding predicts the structure of urban avian assemblages (2008, background): “Providing supplementary food for birds will almost always increase the range of species and the number of individuals visiting an individual garden (Savard et al ., 2000; Daniels & Kirkpatrick, 2006; Parsons et al ., 2006).”
The ecology of urban areas and their functions for species diversity (2011, unknown): “Various authors report a positive correlation both between native vegetation elements and species richness (Chace and Walsh 2006) and between native vegetation elements and, for example, native bird species or arthropods (McIntyre et al. 2001; Daniels and Kirkpatrick 2006).”
How many birds are there in a city of half a million people? (2009, background): “…private green space management (Sandström et al ., 2006), disturbance (Matlack, 1993), cultivation of large numbers of non-native plants (Marco et al ., 2008) and the provision of feeding and nesting resources for wildlife (Daniels & Kirkpatrick, 2006; Gaston et al ., 2007; Fuller et al ., 2008).”
The importance of urban backgardens on plant and invertebrate recruitment: a field microcosm experiment (2010, background): “The correlation of mean seed mass captured in microcosms with number of woody plant species in the backgarden was likely driven by increased seed rain from these species, but it is also likely that woody species provided nesting and perching habitats for birds which further increases seed dispersal ”