Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area
Grazing by large herbivores is increasingly used as a management tool in European nature reserves. The aim is usually to support an open but heterogeneous habitat and its corresponding plant and animal communities. Previous studies showed that birds may profit from grazing but that the effect varies...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7792526 2023-05-15T16:08:36+02:00 Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area Lovász, Lilla Korner-Nievergelt, Fränzi Amrhein, Valentin 2021-01-05 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792526/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33505805 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792526/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33505805 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 © 2021 Lovász et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY PeerJ Conservation Biology Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 2021-01-31T01:20:29Z Grazing by large herbivores is increasingly used as a management tool in European nature reserves. The aim is usually to support an open but heterogeneous habitat and its corresponding plant and animal communities. Previous studies showed that birds may profit from grazing but that the effect varies among bird species. Such studies often compared bird counts among grazed areas with different stocking rates of herbivores. Here, we investigated how space use of Konik horses and Highland cattle is related to bird counts in a recently restored conservation area with a year-round natural grazing management. We equipped five horses and five cattle with GPS collars and correlated the density of their GPS positions on the grazed area with the density of bird observations from winter through the breeding season. We found that in the songbirds of our study site, both the overall density of bird individuals and the number of species increased with increasing density of GPS positions of grazers. Correlations of bird density with horse density were similar to correlations with cattle density. Of the eight most common songbird species observed in our study area, the Eurasian Skylark and the Common Starling had the clearest positive correlations with grazer density, while the Blackbird showed a negative correlation. Skylarks and Starlings in our study area thus seem to profit from year-round natural grazing by a mixed group of horses and cattle. Text Eurasian Skylark PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 9 e10657 |
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Conservation Biology |
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Conservation Biology Lovász, Lilla Korner-Nievergelt, Fränzi Amrhein, Valentin Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
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Conservation Biology |
description |
Grazing by large herbivores is increasingly used as a management tool in European nature reserves. The aim is usually to support an open but heterogeneous habitat and its corresponding plant and animal communities. Previous studies showed that birds may profit from grazing but that the effect varies among bird species. Such studies often compared bird counts among grazed areas with different stocking rates of herbivores. Here, we investigated how space use of Konik horses and Highland cattle is related to bird counts in a recently restored conservation area with a year-round natural grazing management. We equipped five horses and five cattle with GPS collars and correlated the density of their GPS positions on the grazed area with the density of bird observations from winter through the breeding season. We found that in the songbirds of our study site, both the overall density of bird individuals and the number of species increased with increasing density of GPS positions of grazers. Correlations of bird density with horse density were similar to correlations with cattle density. Of the eight most common songbird species observed in our study area, the Eurasian Skylark and the Common Starling had the clearest positive correlations with grazer density, while the Blackbird showed a negative correlation. Skylarks and Starlings in our study area thus seem to profit from year-round natural grazing by a mixed group of horses and cattle. |
format |
Text |
author |
Lovász, Lilla Korner-Nievergelt, Fränzi Amrhein, Valentin |
author_facet |
Lovász, Lilla Korner-Nievergelt, Fränzi Amrhein, Valentin |
author_sort |
Lovász, Lilla |
title |
Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
title_short |
Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
title_full |
Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
title_fullStr |
Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
title_full_unstemmed |
Grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
title_sort |
grazer density and songbird counts in a restored conservation area |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792526/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33505805 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 |
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Eurasian Skylark |
genre_facet |
Eurasian Skylark |
op_source |
PeerJ |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792526/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33505805 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 |
op_rights |
© 2021 Lovász et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10657 |
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e10657 |
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