Ardea
Official journal of the Netherlands Ornithologists' Union

login


[close window] [previous abstract] [next abstract]

Herrando S., Brotons L., del Amo R. & Llacuna S. (2002) Bird community succession after fire in a dry Mediterranean shrubland. ARDEA 90 (2): 303-310
Animal succession and restoration of community structure after fire are related to vegetation regeneration, which is influenced by climate. As the thermo-Mediterranean life zone is characterised by stronger dryness conditions than other Mediterranean zones, we hypothesised that the bird community succession here is very slow. We used the point-count method to census birds from the first to the sixth breeding seasons after fire in burnt and control shrublands of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Bird richness and abundance increased rapidly and even exceeded the values of the control zone six years after the fire. Nevertheless, in the burnt zone, the expected change from communities dominated by open-space species to communities dominated by shrubland species was not detected and high proportions of the former were maintained in the species pool throughout the study period


[close window] [previous abstract] [next abstract]