Publication: Small ponds support high terrestrial bird species richness in a Mediterranean semiarid region
Authors
Zamora Marín, Jose´ M. ; Zamora López, Antonio ; Jiménez Franco, María V. ; Calvo, Jose´ F. ; Oliva Paterna, Francisco J.
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Publisher
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04552-7
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
©2021. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This document is the Accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Hydrobiologia. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04552-7
Abstract
Ponds are among the world’s most endan gered freshwater ecosystems. A comprehensive
knowledge of pond biodiversity is urgently required
to inform effective pond management and conserva tion actions. Most studies about pond biodiversity
focus on aquatic taxa, while the terrestrial biodiver sity, especially of birds, has been little studied.
Moreover, the few studies existing on pond biodiver sity do not account for different detection rates of
species, thus yielding biased results. Here, we apply a
hierarchical Bayesian modelling technique to data
obtained from visual censuses to estimate bird species
richness associated with small ponds in a semiarid
region, considering the imperfect detection of species.
The model incorporates specific responses to site
characteristics (pond typology), landscape (environ mental heterogeneity) and at regional scale (mean
annual precipitation). The studied ponds were used by
two thirds of the terrestrial breeding bird community
of the study region. Our modelling approach increased
by an average of 7.5 species the observed site-specific
richness. Drinking troughs supported a greater rich ness than other pond types. Environmental hetero geneity was positively related with species richness,
whereas no clear relation was observed between
richness and precipitation. In addition to ecosystem
services provided by ponds to human welfare, our
results suggest these small isolated habitats may act as
key landscape elements for terrestrial birds in semiarid
regions.
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Citation
Hydrobiologia (2021) 848:1623–1638
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