Artificial bird perches promote vegetal regeneration

GUIDETTI, BRENDA YAMILE; DARDANELLI, SEBASTIÁN; AMICO, GUILLERMO CESAR; MIÑO, FÁTIMA M.L. & RODRIGUEZ-CABAL MARIANO A.

Puerto Iguazú

Congreso; Ornithological Congress of the Americas; 2017

Association of Field Ornithologists, Sociedade Brasileira de Ornitologia y Aves Argentinas

A large proportion of agricultural fields are often abandoned after a few years of use. Without any intervention, these landscapes show a slow reversion to native ecosystems, or to ecosystems dominated by anemophilous species. One of the main barriers to regeneration of vegetation is poor supply of seeds. In relation to this limitation, the use of artificial perches is an emergent restoration technique that favor the arrival of seeds in open areas where dispersion by birds is limited by lack of trees. To evaluate the effectiveness of this practice, we conducted a global scale meta-analysis and a local scale field experiment in the Espinal forest of Entre Ríos, evaluating seed dispersal of woody species with fleshy fruits in deforested sites with and without perches. The result of the meta-analysis showed that, at global scale, the establishment of artificial perches increases abundance and richness of seeds that arrive at degraded areas adjacent to relics of woody vegetation. The same effect was detected in the local scale experiment (average of 37,235 seeds/m2 ± 91,013 for perches compared to 0,345 seeds/m2 ± 2,870 for control treatment). Perches also favored the rapid arrival of species that without active restoration would appear in later stages of succession. Our results show that the use of artificial perches allows overcoming the problem of the low availability of seeds in degraded agricultural landscapes, promoting and / or accelerating vegetal regeneration. Seed rain under perches generates "recruiting nuclei" which can expand, replicating the species composition of the surrounding landscape.