CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Management under ecological schemes and increasing habitat heterogeneity, areessential for enhancing biodiversity in vineyards. Birds provide several contributions toagriculture, for example pest control, recreation and enhancing human mental health,and have intrinsic value. Birds are also ideal model organisms because they are easyto survey, and species respond differently to agricultural land use at different scales.Vegetated borders of crops are key for many species of birds, and distance to theborder have been found to be an important factor in vineyard dominatedagroecosystems. We evaluate if there are differences in the bird assemblage, betweenthe interior compared to borders within vineyards, using a hierarchical communityoccupancy model. We hypothesized that occupancy of birds is greater in environmentswith greater heterogeneity, which in this study was considered to be contributed by theproximity to vegetated corridors. We expected that vineyard borders close to corridorswill have higher bird occupancy than the center of the vineyard. The research wasconducted in three vineyards with biodiversity-friendly management practices, inGualtallary, Mendoza. Bird surveys were conducted over three breeding seasons from2018 to 2020. Occupancy and richness of the bird community was more closelyassociated with the borders adjacent to the corridors than with the interior of thevineyards, as we initially predicted, although the assemblage of birds did not differmuch. More than 75% of the registered species consume exclusively or partiallyinvertebrates. Biodiversity-friendly management and ecological schemes, together withvegetated corridors provide multiple benefits for biodiversity conservation. Theseapproaches not only minimize the use of agrochemicals but also prioritize soil coverwith spontaneous vegetation, which supports a diverse community of insectivorous birdspecies, potentially contributing to pest control.

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