Core Project 10 - Exploratories for large-scale and long-term functional biodiversity research - Vertebrate diversity and ecosystem functioning

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Terrestrial vertebrates impact their environment as predators, seed dispersers, and bioperturbators. The framework of the Biodiversity Exploratories provides a unique opportunity to study the functional feed back loops between vertebrate diversity and diversity patterns of other taxa in human-modified environments. By combining long-term assessment of species richness and abundances with experimental approaches we assess population dynamics and species turn-over of birds, bats, and large mammals along different land-use types and intensities in forests and grasslands and link them to important ecosystem processes. The results of our study form base-line data for core and further projects and make an important contribution to the ecological synthesis approach. Data collection from the first two years (2008-2009) underline the necessity of long-term insights into the dynamics of birds, bats, and large mammals to permit identification of the main drivers that influence their diversity and abundance on local and regional scales and to derive possible consequences for functional relationships. We plan to continue our standardized monitoring approach on the 300 experimental plots (EPs) of the 3 Biodiversity Exploratories in order to test a) whether the observed year-to-year differences in diversity patterns and abundances are more likely to reflect short-term fluctuations or long-term trends and b) to determine the main drivers of these patterns. Expanding our approach further, we want to c) link bat diversity and activity to structural parameters of the forest using LiDAR data, d) address parasitation rates of selected bird species in relation to land-use intensity and host diversity and e) unravel the functional relationships between plowing activity of wild boar (bioperturbation) and plant diversity as well as soil structure.