Artificial Perches: Ecological and Functional Aspects of its Contribution in the Atlantic Forest

Abstract

Ecological restoration through conventional plantation techniques can create forests with low biodiversity. As such, one way to overcome possible shortcomings of the restoration process is to use nucleation techniques, such as artificial perches. These structures attract the avifauna and increase the deposition of seeds associated with feces or bird regurgitation. Seed rain and seedlings regeneration were monitored under artificial perches and control areas in a degraded area of Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. In this study, 46 morphospecies of seeds were identified. Under the perches, greater abundance and richness of seeds were found with certain ecological and functional traits that support the role of artificial perches as a biological diversity core. Seedling establishment was low under the perches and control areas. This suggests that integrated actions to improve soil conditions should be applied to enhance seedling establishment.

Survival, seedlings growth and natural regeneration in areas under ecological restoration in a sandy coastal plain (restinga) of southeastern Brazil

“…The use of artificial perches as useful nucleation technique for restoration has been reported by several authors for different vegetation types elsewhere, for example Holl (1998) in tropical pastures, Shiels and Walker (2003) for Puerto Rican landslides, Espíndola and Reis (2009) in a Southern Brazilian restinga, Tres and Reis (2009) in riparian forest in Atlantic Forest, Cavallero et al (2013) in post fire areas in Argentina, Vogel et al (2016) in a subtropical agroecosystem, Oliveira et al (2018) in the brazilian Cerrado, Alencar and Guilherme (2020) in Amazon, Iguatemy et al (2020) in Atlantic forest and Freeman et al (2021) in Northeastern Australia.…”

“…Considering that most of restinga species are zoochorous (Oliveira et al 2001;Zamith & Scarano 2004;Scherer et al 2005) and the capacity of restinga communities to shelter a wide variety of animal speciesdue to its continuous flowering and fruiting throughout the year, providing food sources (Lacerda et al 1993), a good way to attract some potential dispersers such as avifauna and chiropterofauna is the use nucleation techniques. These include applied nucleation, which is the establishment of small patches of shrubs and/or trees to serve as focal areas for recovery (Corbin & Holl 2012) and installation of artificial perches (Holl 1998;Iguatemy et al 2020). Applied nucleation has been used not only for tropical areas (Zahawi & Augspurger 2006;Piiroinen et al 2015;Ramírez-Soto et al 2018), but also in several different ecosystems, such as temperate forests and woodlands (Robinson & Handel 2000;Rey Benayas et al 2015;Saha et al 2016;Aradottir & Halldorsson 2018), salt marshes (Silliman et al 2015), arid shrublands (Hulvey et al 2017) and grasslands (Grygiel et al 2018).…”

“…In turn, artificial perches are structures made of dry vegetation or woody poles that act as resting and/or shelter points for animals carrying seeds from nearby fragments. The presence of perches facilitates seed arrival, through regurgitation or defecation, and their subsequent germination may lead to the initiation of the restoration process by attracting other animal and plant species and forming larger nuclei of diversity (Holl 1998;Reis et al 2003Reis et al , 2010Tres et al 2007;Iguatemy et al 2020) and so intensifies the supply of seed rain (McClanahan & Wolfe 1993) bringing regional diversity to the area under restoration.…”

Forest restoration by different nucleation techniques in Urochloa grassland

“…Since all these methods are simple and cheap to carry out, they have awoken much interest, which has been increased by the promise of a lower need for cultivation methods both during and after their implantation phase (Zahawi et al, 2013;Chazdon & Uriarte, 2016). However, ecological restoration actions must take into account each environmental scenario, in order to provide technical recommendations that are adapted to the local reality and supported by field results (Holl et al, 2017).…”

Bioindicadores para avaliação e monitoramento da restauração ecológica de área em ambiente de mineração de bauxita, Miraí, MG

“…m -2 ). Esse resultado corrobora com estudos realizados no bioma Mata Atlântica, demonstrando eficiência limitada dessa técnica de forma isolada na recuperação de áreas degradadas (Almeida et al 2016;Iguatemy et al 2020). Apesar da comprovada utilização dos poleiros artificiais pela avifauna e da chegada de sementes, a germinação, estabelecimento e desenvolvimento de mudas é drasticamente limitado pelas condições edáficas, comprometendo a eficácia dessa técnica.…”