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Avian ecosystem functions are influenced by small mammal ecosystem engineering.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Birds are important mobile link species that contribute to landscape-scale patterns by means of pollination, seed dispersal, and predation. Birds are often associated with habitats modified by small mammal ecosystem engineers. We investigated whether birds prefer to forage on degu (Octodon degus) runways by comparing their foraging effort across sites with a range of runway densities, including sites without runways. We measured granivory by granivorous and omnivorous birds at Rinconada de Maipú, central Chile. As a measure of potential bird foraging on insects, we sampled invertebrate prey richness and abundance across the same sites. We then quantified an index of plot-scale functional diversity due to avian foraging at the patch scale. RESULTS:We recorded that birds found food sources sooner and ate more at sites with higher densities of degu runways, cururo mounds, trees, and fewer shrubs. These sites also had higher invertebrate prey richness but lower invertebrate prey abundance. This implies that omnivorous birds, and possibly insectivorous birds, forage for invertebrates in the same plots with high degu runway densities where granivory takes place. In an exploratory analysis we also found that plot-scale functional diversity for four avian ecosystem functions were moderately to weakly correllated to expected ecosystem function outcomes at the plot scale. CONCLUSIONS:Degu ecosystem engineering affects the behavior of avian mobile link species and is thus correlated with ecosystem functioning at relatively small spatial scales.

SUBMITTER: Root-Bernstein M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3878134 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Avian ecosystem functions are influenced by small mammal ecosystem engineering.

Root-Bernstein Meredith M Fierro Andres A Armesto Juan J Ebensperger Luis A LA

BMC research notes 20131220

<h4>Background</h4>Birds are important mobile link species that contribute to landscape-scale patterns by means of pollination, seed dispersal, and predation. Birds are often associated with habitats modified by small mammal ecosystem engineers. We investigated whether birds prefer to forage on degu (Octodon degus) runways by comparing their foraging effort across sites with a range of runway densities, including sites without runways. We measured granivory by granivorous and omnivorous birds at ...[more]

PMID: 24359802

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Project description:Over the past half-century, large mammal populations have declined substantially throughout East Africa, mainly due to habitat loss and unsustainable direct exploitation. While it has been acknowledged that the loss of large mammals can have direct and cascading effects on community composition and ecosystem characteristics, limited quantitative work has been done on how declines of large herbivore populations impacts the abundance of mutualistic symbionts. Using a space-for-time observational approach, we quantified the large mammal community alongside the densities, host preferences and behaviors of mutualistic red-billed oxpeckers (Buphagus erythrorhynchus), and yellow-billed oxpeckers (Buphagus africanus) in northern Tanzania. At the landscape scale, mammal community composition was substantially less diverse in highly human-dominated areas when compared with more protected areas, with an observed complete loss of large wild mammal species in two study areas. Mirroring this trend, oxpecker densities were lowest in the least protected areas, and highest in fully protected areas. Using resource selection functions implemented via generalized linear models at different scales, we found that oxpeckers (1) were predominantly (67% of red-billed oxpeckers; 70% of yellow-billed oxpeckers) feeding on larger (between 500kg and 1500kg) ungulate host species within the mammal community, (2) usually preferred feeding on larger individuals (adults and males) within a specific host species population, and (3) preferred hosts that were more tolerant of their presence. In particular, cattle were especially intolerant of oxpecker presence and were relatively effective in displacing oxpeckers. We found little evidence that oxpecker feeding was parasitic across all host species; wound feeding was only observed on giraffe, comprising 6% and 4% of feeding behavior in red-billed and yellow-billed oxpeckers respectively. Thus, a loss of large-bodied and oxpecker tolerant host species is a likely explanation for declines of oxpecker populations in human dominated landscapes, which may have further cascading effects.

Project description:Recovery of an ecosystem following disturbance can be severely hampered or even shift altogether when a point disturbance exceeds a certain spatial threshold. Such scale-dependent dynamics may be caused by preemptive competition, but may also result from diminished self-facilitation due to weakened ecosystem engineering. Moreover, disturbance can facilitate colonization by engineering species that alter abiotic conditions in ways that exacerbate stress on the original species. Consequently, establishment of such counteracting engineers might reduce the spatial threshold for the disturbance, by effectively slowing recovery and increasing the risk for ecosystem shifts to alternative states. We tested these predictions in an intertidal mudflat characterized by a two-state mosaic of hummocks (humps exposed during low tide) dominated by the sediment-stabilizing seagrass Zostera noltii) and hollows (low-tide waterlogged depressions dominated by the bioturbating lugworm Arenicola marina). In contrast to expectations, seagrass recolonized both natural and experimental clearings via lateral expansion and seemed unaffected by both clearing size and lugworm addition. Near the end of the growth season, however, an additional disturbance (most likely waterfowl grazing and/or strong hydrodynamics) selectively impacted recolonizing seagrass in the largest (1 m(2)) clearings (regardless of lugworm addition), and in those medium (0.25 m(2)) clearings where lugworms had been added nearly five months earlier. Further analyses showed that the risk for the disturbance increased with hollow size, with a threshold of 0.24 m(2). Hollows of that size were caused by seagrass removal alone in the largest clearings, and by a weaker seagrass removal effect exacerbated by lugworm bioturbation in the medium clearings. Consequently, a sufficiently large disturbance increased the vulnerability of recolonizing seagrass to additional disturbance by weakening seagrass engineering effects (sediment stabilization). Meanwhile, the counteracting ecosystem engineering (lugworm bioturbation) reduced that threshold size. Therefore, scale-dependent interactions between habitat-mediated facilitation, competition and disturbance seem to maintain the spatial two-state mosaic in this ecosystem.

Dataset Information

Avian ecosystem functions are influenced by small mammal ecosystem engineering.

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Avian ecosystem functions are influenced by small mammal ecosystem engineering.

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