Can intensive agricultural landscapes favour some raptor species? The Marsh harrier in north-eastern Spain
Can intensive agricultural landscapes favour some raptor species? The Marsh harrier in north-eastern Spain
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1469-1795.2011.00449.x
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发表时间：
2011-08-01
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Manosa, S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cardador, L.;Carrete, M.;Manosa, S.
过去60年的农业集约化与农田中生物多样性和几种鸟类繁殖种群的减少有关。然而，农业集约化并没有以同样的方式影响所有物种，改变后的景观仍然可以为物种提供适当的栖息地，容忍一定程度的人为变化。了解人工景观中的栖息地选择是有效管理和保护使用它们的物种的先决条件。然而，占据这些景观的个体所做出的与栖息地有关的选择往往很难解释，因为他们使用的线索可能与他们进化的生态环境无关。在这里，我们调查了筑巢栖息地的选择，在地面筑巢猛禽繁殖主要在湿地，这与许多其他物种占用农田，经历了人口增加，在一些农业地区。我们使用多变量分析，以评估在何种程度上栖息地的特点，人为干扰或接近其他占用网站影响筑巢网站占用。我们的研究结果表明，沼泽harriers占据繁殖场所根据栖息地线索在两个互补的空间尺度（即繁殖场所和觅食区）。这项研究表明，一种猛禽物种，利用人工建造的结构，如池塘进行繁殖，同时利用周围的作物进行狩猎，可以利用农业集约化。人们往往只从对受影响物种的有害影响的角度来看待环境扰动。然而，人类活动正在造成自然景观的许多类型的改变，这些改变可以被某些物种利用，并对这些变化做出积极反应。一些猛禽的适应人类改变的环境，如沼泽鹞在我们的研究领域，提出了怀疑是否适合使用这些物种作为自然栖息地质量的指标。
Agricultural intensification over the last 60 decades has been linked to decreases in biodiversity and in the breeding populations of several avian species in farmlands. However, agricultural intensification has not affected all species in the same way and transformed landscapes can still provide suitable habitats for species tolerant to some degree of anthropogenic change. Understanding habitat selection in man-made landscapes is a pre-requisite to effective management and conservation of the species that use them. However, habitat-related choices made by individuals occupying these landscapes are often difficult to explain, as the cues they use may be decoupled from the ecological context in which they evolved. Here, we investigated nesting habitat selection in a ground-nesting raptor breeding mainly in wetlands, which, unlike many other species occupying farmlands, has experienced a population increase in some agricultural regions. We used multivariate analysis to assess the extent to which habitat characteristics, human disturbance or proximity to other occupied sites influenced nesting-site occupancy. Our results indicate that Marsh harriers occupied breeding sites according to habitat cues obtained at two complementary spatial scales (i.e. the breeding site and the foraging area). This study indicates that a raptor species that uses human-made structures such as ponds for breeding while exploiting their surrounding crops for hunting can take advantage of agricultural intensification. Environmental disturbances are often viewed only in terms of their harmful impacts on the affected species. However, human activities are causing many types of alterations in natural landscapes that can be exploited by certain species with positive responses towards these transformations. The adaptation of some raptors to human-altered environments, such as the Marsh harrier in our study area, raises doubts regarding the appropriateness of using such species as indicators of natural habitat quality.