Quality of anthropogenic habitats for Golden-winged Warblers in central Pennsylvania

Variables associated with nest survival of Golden-winged Warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera) among vegetation communities commonly used for nesting

“…Our states spanned 1140 km in latitude, 1770 km in longitude, and 1290 m in elevation and included differences in landscape context, disturbance regime, and vegetation community composition, which in turn may have resulted in different predator communities, predation patterns, and vulnerability of nests. Spatial location (Bulluck et al 2013), landscape context , disturbance regimes (Kubel andYahner 2008, Roth et al 2014), and vegetation community composition (Confer et al 2010) have all been linked to variation in Golden-winged Warbler reproductive performance. Thus, approximately at the scale of our states may lie an ultimate, as opposed to proximate, i.e., state, correlate that could provide a more mechanistic understanding of DSR of Golden-winged Warbler nests.…”

“…Their status has resulted in increased attention from conservation agencies and highlighted the importance of creating and managing vegetation communities used for breeding (Ciuzio et al 2013). Several site-specific studies related Golden-winged Warbler nest survival to habitat characteristics at various scales, including nest sites (Bulluck and Buehler 2008, Aldinger and Wood 2014, Streby et al 2014, territories (Confer et al 2003), clusters of territories (Kubel and Yahner 2008, Confer et al 2010, Roth et al 2014, and study sites (Bulluck et al 2013), and were seldom in agreement about which characteristics were linked to nest survival. A cohesive assessment of DSR that includes multiple states across the breeding range and the various vegetation communities used for nesting may unify disparate findings.…”

“…Although these relationships may be bestidentified with controlled, manipulative experiments, descriptive studies like ours are valuable in documenting variation in DSR and developing preliminary management guidelines. Such a large-scale investigation is warranted because studies have documented environmental conditions wherein reproductive performance was too low to support stable populations without immigration (Confer et al 2003, 2010, Kubel and Yahner 2008. Until the outcome of manipulating vegetation to improve reproductive performance is better understood, conservation strategies designed to do so may be ineffective or counterproductive.…”

“…Predation is the presumed cause of nearly all Golden-winged Warbler nest failures, particularly by small mammals and snakes (Kubel and Yahner 2008, Confer et al 2010, Bulluck et al 2013, Streby et al 2014, similar to other ground-nesting birds (Söderström et al 1998, Thompson and Burhans 2003, Weatherhead and Blouin-Demers 2004, Sperry et al 2008. Nest predation patterns can be best explained with a hierarchical, multiscale modeling approach, where landscape-scale characteristics are most important and provide context for predation patterns at the nest-site scale (Thompson et al 2002).…”

Stand and within-stand factors influencing Golden-winged Warbler use of regenerating stands in the central Appalachian Mountains

“…Visual inspection of normal probability plots for each dependent variable indicated that transformations reduced deviations from normality, and MANOVA analyses are resistant to nonnormality (Zar 1999). Based on breeding biology, we hypothesized that numbers of Golden-winged Warblers would be negatively related to urban land cover (Friesen et al 1995, Rodewald and and distance to the nearest regenerating stand (Streby et al 2012, Frantz et al, in press) but positively related to mean perimeter-to-area ratio Buehler 2001, Rossell et al 2003), forest and young forest land covers (Thogmartin 2010, Roth et al 2012, and size of stand (Kubel and Yahner 2008). We predicted that warbler abundance would have a quadratic relationship to time since harvest Buehler 2001, Bulluck andBuehler 2008).…”