Does woodland condition influence the diversity and abundance of small mammal communities?

Abstract

Abstract. Loss of mammal species in Australia in the last 200 years has been attributed to many factors including habitat removal and altered fire regimes. Decline in tree condition could contribute further to the ongoing decline of mammals. Eucalyptus wandoo trees are currently undergoing a decline in condition that can result in a loss of canopy and other changes to the habitat. This paper examines the relationships between E. wandoo tree condition, habitat characteristics and small mammal species richness and abundance. Live-capture trapping was conducted at 24 E. wandoo sites at Dryandra State Forest and Wandoo Conservation Park, Western Australia. Condition and microhabitat variables of E. wandoo were recorded for each site. Generalised additive mixed models revealed a range of habitat and tree condition characteristics that influenced small mammal abundance and species richness, including site litter cover, crown dieback, understorey vegetation cover and tree density. The availability of coarse woody debris played a large role in explaining the abundance of Cercartetus concinnus and Antechinus flavipes, along with other microhabitat and tree condition variables, such as tree leaf litter and crown dieback. Epicormic growth, crown density and the distance to the drift fence from E. wandoo trees were the common variables in the best model for the abundance of Sminthopsis griseoventer. The decline in condition of E. wandoo and the subsequent modifications to the microhabitat are correlated with changes in the small mammal community. A better understanding of how the decline of E. wandoo impacts small mammal communities could improve management practices in E. wandoo woodlands.

Determinants of variation in heath vegetation structure on coastal dune fields in northeastern South America

“…Besides being associated with abiotic variables, vegetation structure has been shown to be associated with significant compositional (Sundarapadian and Swamy 1999; Peterson and Reich 2008;Gao et al 2014) and productivity gradients (Clark and Clark 2000). Biomass variation has important implications for the structure of trophic webs (Uetz 1991) and for the provisioning of distinct habitat types for the fauna (Tews et al 2004;Díaz 2006;Moore et al 2014). These effects seem to be stronger in oligotrophic ecosystems like heath vegetation (Oliveira Filho et al 2013).…”

“…Recent advances in this area have been registered regarding biomass variation in forested ecosystems, due to its implications for global carbon balance and warming effects (Houghton 2005;Colgan et al 2012;Rosenfield and Souza 2014). However, other aspects of vegetation structure like height, diameter distribution, and lateral growth provide important descriptors about plant growth strategies (McGill et al 2006), and the complexity of vegetation structure has ecological consequences for birds (Díaz 2006) and mammals (Moore et al 2014) in local communities. Vegetation structure variation is directly linked to plant species diversity (Gao et al 2014) and productivity (Clark and Clark 2000;Slik et al 2013).…”