Rural landscape dynamics over time and its consequences for habitat preference patterns of the grey partridge Perdix perdix

Autor: Sabine Marlene Hille, Stéphanie C. Schai-Braun, Eva Maria Schöll
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Partridges
Predation
Social Sciences
Transportation
Perdix
Gamefowl
Galliformes
Predator
education.field_of_study
Multidisciplinary
biology
Ecology
Geography
Eukaryota
Agriculture
Biodiversity
Transportation Infrastructure
Adaptation
Physiological
Habitats
Trophic Interactions
Habitat
Community Ecology
visual_art
Vertebrates
Medicine
Engineering and Technology
Social Planning
Research Article
Farms
Ecological Metrics
visual_art.art_subject
Science
Population
Diversification (marketing strategy)
Human Geography
Grey partridge
Civil Engineering
Birds
Urban Geography
Animals
Humans
Cities
education
Ecosystem
Population Density
business.industry
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Organisms
Biology and Life Sciences
Species Diversity
biology.organism_classification
Roads
Fowl
Amniotes
Earth Sciences
business
Zoology
Zdroj: PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 8, p e0255483 (2021)
ISSN: 1932-6203
Popis: Intensification of agricultural practices has drastically shaped farmland landscapes and generally caused a decline in spatial and temporal heterogeneity, thus leading to changes in habitat quality and food resources and a decline for most farmland birds Europe-wide. The relationship between complex landscape changes and habitat preferences of animals still remains poorly understood. Particularly, temporal and spatial changes in diversity may affect not only habitat choice but also population sizes. To answer that question, we have looked into a severely declining typical farmland bird species, the grey partridge Perdix perdix in a diverse farmland landscape near Vienna to investigate the specific habitat preferences in respect to the change of agricultural landscape over two decades and geographic scales. Using a dataset collected over 7.64 km² and between 2001 and 2017 around Vienna, we calculated Chesson’s electivity index to study the partridge’s change of habitat selection over time on two scales and between winter and spring in 2017. Although the farmland landscape underwent an ongoing diversification over the two decades, the grey partridges declined in numbers and shifted habitat use to less diverse habitats. During covey period in winter, partridges preferred also human infrastructure reservoirs such as roads and used more diverse areas with smaller fields than during breeding where they selected harvested fields but surprisingly, avoided hedges, fallow land and greening. Known as best partridge habitats, those structures when inappropriately managed might rather function as predator reservoirs. The avoidance behaviour may further be a consequence of increasing landscape structuring and edge effects by civilisation constructions. Besides, the loss in size and quality of partridge farmland is altered by crop choice and pesticides reducing plant and insect food. With declining breeding pairs, the grey partridge does not seem to adjust to these unsustainable landscape changes and farmland practices.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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