Landscape structure and the seed dispersal service provided by birds

Se invita el jueves 7 de julio a las 14:30 hs a un seminario del ciclo de seminarios 2016 del Laboratorio Ecotono, en la sala Eddy Rapoport.

Título: Landscape structure and the seed dispersal service provided by birds

Expositor: Danielle Ramos - Doctorado en Ecologia y Biodiversidad - Unesp (campus Rio Claro), Brasil

la charla va a ser en español (con algunas palabras en portugués)

Resumen: Movements of seed disperser birds connecting fragmented landscapes promote genetic diversity, colonization of new areas, and persistence of plant populations. However, little is known about how dispersers behavior responds to different degrees of human changes on landscape structure and its consequences to quality and conservation of seed dispersal. We need to fulfill that gap in order to improve management practices to recover and maintain biodiversity, interactions, and ecological processes and services. On this talk, I will present some initial results and conclusions of a study about how the movement behavior of fruit-eating birds can be shaped by forest cover and spatial distribution and quality of perches within the matrix of anthropic landscapes. We conducted this project in five 600 x 600 m plots in a gradient of forest cover in the surroundings of a large Atlantic Forest Corridor of Southeastern Brazil. We have completed 360 hours of direct observation of three groups of abundant seed dispersers birds movements: Turdus spp. (thrushes), Tangara sayaca (sayaca tanagers), and Patagioenas spp. (pigeons). We were able to describe and simulate birds movement using mechanistic models fitted to observation data. All movement models were more realistic when included perch structure variables besides perch distance, and uses of different perches differ between species and depend on landscape forest cover. Birds’ movements between forest patches were conditioned by the presence of perches within the matrix especially for thrushes, which are more forest dependents. Our preliminary results highlight that seed rain changes between landscapes with different degrees of degradation and matrix quality, and conservation projects should take it into account in order to be more efficient.

Para más información sobre seminarios:

https://sites.google.com/site/labecotono/detalle

Comité organizador del ciclo de seminarios del Laboratorio Ecotono