Black-tailed Godwit abundancies across key European breeding habitats ...
The endangered continental Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa limosa) is a migratory ground-nesting wader breeding in a wide variety of open, wet habitats across Europe. Conservation research has concentrated on the causes of population decline, but we know surprisingly little about whether any reso...
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2023
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gqnk98ssz https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.gqnk98ssz |
| Summary: | The endangered continental Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa limosa) is a migratory ground-nesting wader breeding in a wide variety of open, wet habitats across Europe. Conservation research has concentrated on the causes of population decline, but we know surprisingly little about whether any resources limit local breeding populations and, if so, whether these are resources for the adults or the chicks. We collected data from 63 key breeding sites in five countries across Europe to test whether, after correcting for differences in surveyed areas, the size of Godwit breeding populations was related to environmental variables (vegetation biomass, soil moisture) or food resources for adult birds (soil invertebrates) or chicks (vegetation dwelling arthropods) measured during different times of the reproductive cycle. We found the number of Godwit territories to be positively related to arthropod abundance during the chick-hatching period. We found additional, weaker support for a positive relation between ... : We collected data in 63 sites in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia and Finland. All sites were areas potentially hosting breeding Godwits, as indicated by survey information from the years before this study was conducted. Site selection aimed to include locations varying widely in environmental conditions both within countries and between countries to incorporate as much variation as possible in variables potentially explaining Godwit breeding numbers and representing all habitat types used by Godwits for breeding. We investigated how the total arthropod and soil-dwelling invertebrate abundance, vegetation biomass and soil moisture in two separate periods were related to the number of Godwit territories per site. As this gave a better model fit than directly using territory densities, we used as the main response variable the number of territories while statistically accounting for differences between sites in the area surveyed. Additionally, it allowed us to examine whether area-territory number ... |
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