Landscape Ecology vol. 10 no. 5 pp 267-275 (1995)

• Main Authors: Spb Academic Publishing, Bodil Enokssonl, Per Angelstam, Karin Larsson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: landscape patch; taiga; Sweden; biogeography; distribution; resident birds; isolation
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.3.2371; http://landscape.forest.wisc.edu/landscapeecology/articles/v10i05p267.pdf

Six species of resident birds were censusedin patches of deciduous forest within a coniferous forest landscape in south central Sweden. Here, the forests have been subjected to active forestry for a long time, but with recently increased intensity. Although the forest cover is more or less continuous in this landscape, mature deciduous forest is now a rare element compared with the untouched forest. All censusedpatches were similar with regards to size, proportion and amount of deciduous trees, but were either isolated in the coniferous forest (`isolated patches') or near to other deciduous patches (`aggregated patches'). We concentrated on six species of resident birds, with moderate area requirements, that are tied to deciduous forest andwhose ecology is well-known. The Nuthatch and the Marsh tit, whichboth show strict year-round territoriality and have a restricted dispersal phase, were significantly more likely to be found in aggregated than in isolated patches. No effect was found for the Great tit and the Blue tit, which are less territorial outside the breeding season and have a longer dispersal phase. Moreover, the Great tit is less specialized on deciduous forest than the other species. Also, the Long-tailed tit was negatively affected by isolation, which may be due to restricted dispersal and to larger area requirements of this flock-territorial species. The Hazel grouse, finally, was not affected, but this larger bird probably uses the forest in a different way from the smaller species. Our study clearly shows that fragmentation of one type of forest (deciduous) within another can have seri- ous detrimental effects on forest-living species and raises important issues for forest management practices and conservation within a forest landscape.