Assessing habitat-related disturbance in bird communities: Applying hemeroby and generalism as indicators

Battisti, C. and Fanelli, G. and Pavel, D. and Redolfi De Zan, L. and Rossi de Gasperis, S. and Caneva, G. (2017) Assessing habitat-related disturbance in bird communities: Applying hemeroby and generalism as indicators. Community Ecology, 18 (2). pp. 215-223. ISSN 1585-8553

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Abstract

We tested the application of the concept of hemeroby and generalism at community level, on a set of birds occurring in various habitats of central Italy characterized by different level of disturbance. In each habitat-related bird community, we applied the recently published species-specific score in hemeroby (a proxy of habitat-related disturbance; HS_i) and hemerobiotic diversity (a proxy of generalism; H’H_i) to local species frequency, obtaining weighted values at community level (HS_tot and H’H_tot). The relationship between HS_tot vs. H’H_tot showed an increasing trend moving from reed beds through forests and mosaics to urban communities. Quadratic model (best fit) evidenced a significant correlation between these variables and a tendency toward a hump-shaped curve, corroborating results already observed at species level (intermediate generalism hypothesis). The co-inertia analysis discriminated four groups of habitat-related communities, characterized by species with different levels of disturbance-sensitivity (expressed by HS_i) and generalism (expressed by hemerobiotic diversity; H’H_i): (i) forest type-related, where mature wood communities were separated from a coppiced wood one; (ii) communities of moderately disturbed agricultural habitats; (iii) communities embedded in highly disturbed mosaics, and (iv) a group including either a highly disturbed urban habitat or a low disturbed wetland reed bed, with highly specialized species (respectively, synanthropic species and water-related species). Total scores in hemeroby and hemerobiotic diversity, expressing the composition in species with different disturbance preference and generalism, might act as good community-based indicators of degree of naturalness, especially for forest habitat types.

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