CSIRO Publishing blank image blank image blank image blank imageBooksblank image blank image blank image blank imageJournalsblank image blank image blank image blank imageAbout Usblank image blank image blank image blank imageShopping Cartblank image blank image blank image You are here: Journals > Emu   
Emu
http://www.birdlife.org.au
  A Journal of BirdLife Australia
 
blank image Search
 
blank image blank image
blank image
 
  Advanced Search
   

Journal Home
About the Journal
Editorial Board
Contacts
Content
Online Early
Current Issue
Just Accepted
All Issues
Special Issues
Research Fronts
Rowley Reviews
Sample Issue
For Authors
General Information
Notice to Authors
Submit Article
For Referees
Referee Guidelines
Review Article
Annual Referee Index
For Subscribers
Subscription Prices
Customer Service
Print Publication Dates

red arrow Complete Archive
blank image
With the complete digital archive of Emu now online, we have selected some of the most interesting and significant papers for readers to access freely.

blue arrow e-Alerts
blank image
Subscribe to our Email Alert or RSS feeds for the latest journal papers.

red arrow Connect with BirdLife
blank image
facebook   TwitterIcon

red arrow Connect with CP
blank image
facebook   youtube

 

Article << Previous     |     Next >>   Contents Vol 112(1)

Temporal variation in a savanna bird assemblage: what changes over 5 years?

A. S. Kutt A C, G. C. Perkins A, N. Colman B, E. P. Vanderduys A and J. J. Perry A

A CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Ecology Program, PMB PO, Aitkenvale, Qld 4814, Australia.
B School of Natural Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.
C Corresponding author. Email: alex.kutt@bigpond.com

Emu 112(1) 32-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/MU11054
Submitted: 14 July 2011  Accepted: 31 October 2011   Published: 24 February 2012


 
 Full Text
 PDF (278 KB)
 Export Citation
 Print
  
Abstract

Tropical savanna environments are characterised by annual and decadal patterns of resource change, which can affect the patterning of mobile fauna such as birds. In this study, we sampled 60 sites in northern Queensland, four times from 2004 to 2008. We investigated how the bird richness and abundance, and species turnover changed over the sample years and how this differed with vegetation structure. The mean abundance per site was highest in 2005 (92.1 ± 12.0 individuals ha–1) and lowest in 2008 (46.6 ± 3.3), whereas species richness per site was highest in 2004 (19.6 ± 0.9 species ha–1) and lowest again in 2008 (14.7 ± 0.8). Nine species were most abundant in 2004 coincident with extremely high rainfall preceding the survey in that year. Species turnover increased across all sites from 2004 to 2008 and the abundance of 13 species was best accounted for by differences in vegetation structure. Our study demonstrates that local bird communities in the semi-arid fringe of savannas can change rapidly, and mostly where vegetation is modified. This suggests that increased land-use and climate change in northern Australia could have significant effects on the avifauna over fairly short periods.

Additional keywords: climate, conservation, habitat modification, migratory, nomadic, sedentary, species turnover, tropical.


References

Albright, T. P., Pidgeon, A. M., Rittenhouse, C. D., Clayton, M. K., Flather, C. H., Culbert, P. D., Wardlow, B. D., and Radeloff, V. C. (2010). Effects of drought on avian community structure. Global Change Biology 16, 2158–2170.
CrossRef |

Anderson, M. J., Clarke, K. R., and Gorley, R. N. (2008). ‘PERMANOVA+ for Primer. Guide to Software and Statistical Methods.’ (University of Auckland and PRIMER-E Ltd: Plymouth, UK.)

Coops, N. C., Waring, R. H., Wulder, M. A., Pidgeon, A. M., and Radeloff, V. C. (2009). Bird diversity: a predictable function of satellite-derived estimates of seasonal variation in canopy light absorbance across the United States. Journal of Biogeography 36, 905–918.
CrossRef |

Ford, H. A. (2011). The causes of decline of birds of eucalypt woodlands: advances in our knowledge over the last 10 years. Emu 111, 1–9.
CrossRef |

Franklin, D. C. (1999). Opportunistic nectarivory: an annual dry season phenomenon among birds in monsoonal northern Australia. Emu 99, 135–141.
CrossRef |

Franklin, D. C., and Noske, R. A. (1999). Birds and nectar in monsoonal woodland: correlations at three spatio-temporal scales. Emu 99, 15–28.
CrossRef |

Griffioen, P. A., and Clarke, M. F. (2002). Large-scale bird-movement patterns evident in eastern Australian atlas data. Emu 102, 99–125.
CrossRef |

Hannah, D., Woinarski, J. C. Z., Catterall, C. P., McCosker, J. C., Thurgate, N. Y., and Fensham, R. J. (2007). Impacts of clearing, fragmentation and disturbance on the bird fauna of eucalypt savanna woodlands in central Queensland, Australia. Austral Ecology 32, 261–276.
CrossRef |

Holmgren, M., Scheffer, M., Ezcurra, E., Gutierrez, J. R., and Mohren, G. M. J. (2001). El Niño effects on the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 16, 89–94.
CrossRef |

Kutt, A. S. (1996). Bird populations density in thinned, unthinned and old lowland regrowth forest, east Gippsland, Victoria. Emu 96, 280–284.
CrossRef |

Kutt, A. S., and Fisher, A. (2011). Increased grazing and dominance of an exotic pasture (Bothriochloa pertusa) affects vertebrate fauna species composition, abundance and habitat in savanna woodland. Rangeland Journal 33, 49–58.
CrossRef |

Kutt, A. S., and Martin, T. G. (2010). Bird foraging height predicts bird species response to woody vegetation change. Biodiversity and Conservation 19, 2247–2262.
CrossRef |

Kutt, A. S., and Woinarski, J. C. Z. (2007). The effects of grazing and fire on vegetation and the vertebrate assemblage in a tropical savanna woodland in north-eastern Australia. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23, 95–106.
CrossRef |

Likens, G. E., and Lindenmayer, D. B. (2011). A strategic plan for an Australian Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Network. Austral Ecology 36, 1–8.
CrossRef |

Lindenmayer, D. B., and Likens, G. E. (2010). The science and application of ecological monitoring. Biological Conservation 143, 1317–1328.
CrossRef |

Lindenmayer, D. B., Cunningham, R. B., MacGregor, C., Crane, M., Michael, D., Fischer, J., Montague-Drake, R., Felton, A., and Manning, A. (2008). Temporal changes in vertebrates during landscape transformation: a large-scale ‘natural experiment’. Ecological Monographs 78, 567–590.
CrossRef |

Mac Nally, R., Bennett, A. F., Thomson, J. R., Radford, J. Q., Unmack, G., Horrocks, G., and Vesk, P. A. (2009). Collapse of an avifauna: climate change appears to exacerbate habitat loss and degradation. Diversity & Distributions 15, 720–730.
CrossRef |

Maron, M. (2007). Threshold effect of eucalypt density on an aggressive avian competitor. Biological Conservation 136, 100–107.
CrossRef |

Maron, M., Lill, A., Waston, D. M., and Mac Nally, R. (2005). Temporal variation in bird assemblages: how representative is a one-year snapshot? Austral Ecology 30, 383–394.
CrossRef |

Morrison, T. H., McAlpine, C., Rhodes, J. R., Peterson, A., and Schmidt, P. (2010). Back to the future? Planning for environmental outcomes and the new Caring for our Country program. Australian Geographer 41, 521–538.
CrossRef |

Pavey, C. R., and Nano, C. E. M. (2009). Bird assemblages of arid Australia: vegetation patterns have a greater effect than disturbance and resource pulses. Journal of Arid Environments 73, 634–642.
CrossRef |

Perry, J. J., Kutt, A. S., Garnett, S. T., Crowley, G. M., Vanderduys, E. P., and Perkins, G. C. (2011). Changes in the avifauna of Cape York Peninsula over a period of 9 years: the relative effects of fire, vegetation type and climate. Emu 111, 120–131.
CrossRef |

Price, B., McAlpine, C. A., Kutt, A. S., Phinn, S. R., Pullar, D. V., and Ludwig, J. A. (2009). Continuum or discrete patch landscape models for savanna birds? Towards a pluralistic approach. Ecography 32, 745–756.
CrossRef |

Price, B., Kutt, A. S., and McAlpine, C. A. (2010). The importance of fine-scale savanna heterogeneity for reptiles and small mammals. Biological Conservation 143, 2504–2513.
CrossRef |

R Development Core Team (2011). ‘R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing.’ (R Foundation for Statistical Computing: Vienna, Austria.) Available at http://www.r-project.org [Verified 1 February 2012].

Radeloff, V. C., Stewart, S. I., Hawbaker, T. J., Gimmi, U., Pidgeon, A. M., Flather, C. H., Hammer, R. B., and Helmers, D. P. (2010). Housing growth in and near United States protected areas limits their conservation value. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, 940–945.
CrossRef | CAS |

Recher, H. F. (1969). Bird species diversity and habitat diversity in Australia and North America. American Naturalist 103, 75–80.
CrossRef |

Reside, A. E., VanDerWal, J., Kutt, A. S., and Perkins, G. C. (2010). Weather, not climate, defines distributions of vagile bird species. PLoS ONE 5, e13569.
CrossRef |

Rittenhouse, C. D., Pidgeon, A. M., Albright, T. P., Culbert, P. D., Clayton, M. K., Flather, C. H., Huang, C. Q., Masek, J. G., Stewart, S. I., and Radeloff, V. C. (2010). Conservation of forest birds: evidence of a shifting baseline in community structure. PLoS ONE 5, e11938.
CrossRef |

Schulte, L. A., Pidgeon, A. M., and Mladenoff, D. J. (2005). One hundred fifty years of change in forest bird breeding habitat: estimates of species distributions. Conservation Biology 19, 1944–1956.
CrossRef |

Szabo, J. K., Vesk, P. A., Baxter, P. W. J., and Possingham, H. P. (2011). Paying the extinction debt: woodland birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia. Emu 111, 59–70.
CrossRef |

Tassicker, A. L., Kutt, A. S., Vanderduys, E., and Mangru, S. (2006). The effects of vegetation structure on the birds in a tropical savanna woodland in north-eastern Australia. Rangeland Journal 28, 139–152.
CrossRef |

Woinarski, J. C. Z., and Catterall, C. P. (2004). Historical changes in the bird fauna at Coomooboolaroo, northeastern Australia, from the early years of pastoral settlement (1873) to 1999. Biological Conservation 116, 379–401.
CrossRef |

Woinarski, J. C., Connors, G., and Franklin, D. C. (2000). Thinking honeyeater: nectar maps for the Northern Territory, Australia. Pacific Conservation Biology 6, 61–80.

Woinarski, J. C. Z., Williams, R. J., Price, O., and Rankmore, B. (2005). Landscapes without boundaries: wildlife and their environments in northern Australia. Wildlife Research 32, 377–388.
CrossRef |

Wyndham, E. (1982). Movements and breeding seasons of the Budgerigar. Emu 82, 276–282.
CrossRef |


   
 
    
Legal & Privacy | Contact Us | Help

CSIRO

© CSIRO 1996-2013