Behavioural response to anthropogenic habitat disturbance: Indirect impact of harvesting on whinchat populations in Switzerland

Grüebler, Martin U.; Schuler, Heidi; Spaar, Reto; Naef‐Daenzer, Beat

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.02.031

Cited by 20 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Numbers in brackets inside component labels refer to the percentage of overall variation explained by a component (including shared quotas). Values <0 not shown birds determines high rates of nest destruction and nestling mortality (Buckingham, Giovannini, & Peach, 2015;Schekkerman, Teunissen, & Oosterveld, 2009), finally resulting in lowering reproductive success (Broyer, 2009;Müller, Spaar, Schifferli, & Jenni, 2005), modifying behaviour (Grüebler, Schuler, Spaar, & Naef-Daenzer, 2015) and even mating systems, sexual selection, and consequently, evolutionary processes (Perlut et al, 2008), turning once favourable habitats into ecological traps (Broyer, Curtet, & Boissenin, 2012). Also in our study area, modern hay-making is resulting in a drastic decline (sometimes eventually leading to local extinction) of once very common meadow birds breeding on the ground (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward the next Common Agricultural Policy reform: Determinants of avian communities in hay meadows reveal current policy's inadequacy for biodiversity conservation in grassland ecosystems

Assandri

Bogliani

Pedrini

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Semi-natural grasslands are among the richest European ecosystems in terms of biodiversity. However, they have been severely affected by farming intensification and land abandonment, which have been both exacerbated by the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The most recent CAP included a "greening" measure dedicated to grassland conservation, presumed to be beneficial to biodiversity; however, scientific evidence about its effectiveness is still scarce.2. In the Alps, hay meadows have undergone dramatic management changes in recent decades. We used a comprehensive community ecology approach to highlight how the multi-scale and interacting effects of such changes impact birds, with the aim of providing knowledge to support improvements to the CAP. 3. Birds were surveyed at 63 landscape units in northeast Italy, equally subdivided into areas dominated by (a) extensive hay meadows, (b) intensive hay meadows, and (c) areas formerly dominated by meadows but partially converted into other agricultural land use. This environmental gradient mirrors in space the temporal gradient of the agricultural changes that have recently occurred in the Alps.4. Community composition, species richness, and the number of meadow-specialist species were analysed according to environmental predictors (i.e. landscape, meadow management, and topography), and to spatial factors. We aimed to disentangle the exclusive and joint fraction of variation explained by each of them. Meadow conversion, allowed by the CAP in force, created a shift in communitycomposition towards assemblages dominated by generalist species at the expense of meadow specialists. The cover of intensive meadows was negatively correlated with species richness, whereas the number of meadow specialists was negatively correlated with the cover of early-mown (i.e. within the third week of June) meadows. Mowing date was, in turn, related to elevation, with meadows at higher elevations mown later in the season, and to meadow intensification (the use of external inputs, in particular liquid manure, leads to earlier and more frequent cuts per year). | 605Journal of Applied Ecology ASSANDRI et Al.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward the next Common Agricultural Policy reform: Determinants of avian communities in hay meadows reveal current policy's inadequacy for biodiversity conservation in grassland ecosystems

Assandri

Bogliani

Pedrini

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…In the case of mutualists, harvesting the first population would be directly harmful to the second, and we wanted to demonstrate that the trait‐mediated effects of harvesting the first species could by themselves harm the second without any additional effects arising from species interactions. In fact, in real situations, harvesting one population may have both the indirect trait‐mediated effect of increasing dispersal and the direct effects of increasing mortality and decreasing reproduction of other populations (see Grüebler et al., ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case of mutualists, harvesting the first population would be directly harmful to the second, and we wanted to demonstrate that the trait-mediated effects of harvesting the first species could by themselves harm the second without any additional effects arising from species interactions. In fact, in real situations, harvesting one population may have both the indirect trait-mediated effect of increasing dispersal and the direct effects of increasing mortality and decreasing reproduction of other populations (see Grüebler et al, 2015). In Theorem 3.1, we consider a situation where the overall environment for the second (focal) population has enough sink areas that the spatially averaged population growth rate for the second (focal) population is negative, so that excessive movement can result in extinction without competition or other interspecific effects.…”

Section: Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This idea has been studied to a considerable extent in the context of predator-prey systems, where prey responses to the presence of predators can have significant indirect effects (Brown, Laundré, & Gurung, 1999;Peacor & Werner, 2001). Harvesting is in some sense a version of predation, and can have both direct and indirect effects on populations other than those being harvested (Grüebler, Schuler, Spaar, & Naef-Daenzer, 2015). In particular, in Grüebler et al (2015), it was found that harvesting fields could harm grassland birds directly by increasing mortality and destroying nests and could also increase their rates of dispersal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harvesting is in some sense a version of predation, and can have both direct and indirect effects on populations other than those being harvested (Grüebler, Schuler, Spaar, & Naef-Daenzer, 2015). In particular, in Grüebler et al (2015), it was found that harvesting fields could harm grassland birds directly by increasing mortality and destroying nests and could also increase their rates of dispersal. Here, we consider the possibility that harvesting a given population may cause indirect effects on other populations, and how such indirect effects of harvesting might influence population persistence and species interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of harvesting mediated by dispersal traits

Cantrell

Cosner

2018

Natural Resource Modeling

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Trait‐mediated behavioral responses to other species, especially predators, can have important effects on the dynamics of populations. One effect is to modify dispersal patterns, which in turn can modify population dynamics and species interactions. We model a situation where a focal population responds to disturbances created by the harvesting of another population by increasing the rate of random dispersal by individuals. The model shows that in some situations this effect can result in the extinction of the focal population, even if it is not itself subject to harvesting. This observation suggests that it may be desirable to consider trait‐mediated effects when assessing the possible impacts of harvesting on conservation. Recommendations for Resource Managers Be aware that harvesting a given crop or population can affect other populations because of their behavioral responses to the harvesting activity, even if it does not directly impose mortality on those populations or change their interactions with other species. A way that harvesting activity can affect nonharvested populations is to increase their dispersal rate. Managers should be aware that this has the potential to cause extinction in some situations even if no other effects of harvesting are present. For some populations, harvesting resources with which they interact or share an environment could in principle cause both direct and indirect effects, which could combine to have a different, perhaps greater, impact than either one would have separately.

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Early life conditions influence fledging success and subsequent local recruitment rates in a declining migratory songbird, the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra

Halliwell

Ketcher²,

Proud³

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Life history traits and environmental conditions influence reproductive success in animals, and consequences of these can influence subsequent survival and recruitment into breeding populations. Understanding influences on demographic rates is required to determine the causes of decline. Migratory species experience spatially and temporally variable conditions across their annual cycle, making identifying where the factors influencing demographic rates operate challenging. Here, we use the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra as a model declining long-distance migrant bird. We analyse 10 years of data from 247 nesting attempts and 2519 post-fledging observations of 1193 uniquely marked nestlings to examine the influence of life history traits, habitat characteristics and weather on survival of young from the nestling stage to local recruitment into the natal population. We detected potential silver spoon effects where conditions during the breeding stage influence subsequent apparent local recruitment rates, with higher recruitment for fledglings from larger broods, and recruitment rate negatively related to rainfall that chicks experienced in-nest. Additionally, extreme temperatures experienced pre-and post-fledging increased fledging success and recruitment rate. However, we could not determine whether this was driven by temperature influencing mortality during the post-fledging period or later in the annual cycle.Brood size declined with hatching date. In-nest survival increased with brood size and was highest at local temperature extremes. Furthermore, nest survival was highest at nests surrounded with 40%-60% vegetation cover of Bracken Pteridium aquilinum within 50 m of the nest. Our results show that breeding phenology and environmental factors may influence fledging success and recruitment in songbird populations, with conditions experienced during the nestling stage influencing local recruitment rates in Whinchats (i.e. silver spoon effect). Recruitment rates are key drivers of songbird population dynamics. Our results help identify some of the likely breeding season mechanisms that could be important population drivers.

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Behavioural response to anthropogenic habitat disturbance: Indirect impact of harvesting on whinchat populations in Switzerland

Cited by 20 publications

References 41 publications

Toward the next Common Agricultural Policy reform: Determinants of avian communities in hay meadows reveal current policy's inadequacy for biodiversity conservation in grassland ecosystems

Toward the next Common Agricultural Policy reform: Determinants of avian communities in hay meadows reveal current policy's inadequacy for biodiversity conservation in grassland ecosystems

Effects of harvesting mediated by dispersal traits

Early life conditions influence fledging success and subsequent local recruitment rates in a declining migratory songbird, the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra

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