Artificial perches promotes ecosystems restoration

GUIDETTI, BRENDA YAMILE; AMICO, GUILLERMO CESAR; DARDANELLI, SEBASTIÁN; RODRIGUEZ-CABAL, MARIANO A.

PLANT ECOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2016 vol. 217 p. 935 - 942

1385-0237

Native ecosystems are continuously beingtransformed mostly into agricultural lands. Simultaneously, a large proportion of fields are abandonedafter some years of use. Without any intervention,altered landscapes usually show a slow reversion tonative ecosystems, or to novel ecosystems. One of themain barriers to vegetation regeneration is poorpropagule supply. Many restoration programs havealready implemented the use of artificial perches inorder to increase seed availability in open areas wherebird dispersal is limited by the lack of trees. Toevaluate the effectiveness of this practice, we performed a series of meta-analyses comparing the use ofartificial perches versus control sites without perches.We found that setting-up artificial perches increasesthe abundance and richness of seeds that arrive inaltered areas surrounding native ecosystems. Moreover, density of seedlings is also higher in open areaswith artificial perches than in control sites withoutperches. Taken together, our results support the use ofartificial perches to overcome the problem of poorseed availability in degraded fields, promoting and/oraccelerating the restoration of vegetation in concordance with the surrounding landscape.