Ecological succession of colonial waterbirds
- Author:
- Ringler, Katie
- Published:
- [University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2017.
- Physical Description:
- 1 electronic document
- Additional Creators:
- Arnold, Jennifer and Schreyer Honors College
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- honors.libraries.psu.edu , Connect to this object online.
- Restrictions on Access:
- Open Access.
- Summary:
- Ecological succession has been widely studied for plants, but less well documented for vertebrates across broad regional scales. The large lakes of North America support important breeding colonies of gulls, terns, pelicans and cormorants, each of which have well-established habitat preferences. Evidence exists that breeding waterbirds can modify their habitats, changing the suitability for nesting in future years. This thesis examines the evidence for ecological succession of waterbird communities within the large lakes of Manitoba and tests that vegetation modification underlies these relationships. Three community classifications (cormorant/pelican, gull/large tern, small tern) were established based on body mass and nesting habitat preferences (verified by 2016 surveys in the North American Great Lakes). Given the known impacts that each species has on vegetation, the succession of waterbirds in these areas was predicted to follow a cyclical pattern: cormorants/pelicans to gulls/large terns to small terns and returning to cormorants/pelicans again. To test for succession, 347 breeding sites were studied using census data from 1945 -2012. Forty-six of these breeding colonies supported at least two of these communities during the time periods 1945-1999 and 2000-2012 and were used to explore waterbird succession. Thirteen sites of these 46 (28%) matched the community abundance trends predicted by the hypothesized cyclical succession. There was evidence of expected underlying vegetation changes based on analyses of contemporary and historic aerial photos from eleven of the thirteen sites.
- Other Subject(s):
- Genre(s):
- Dissertation Note:
- B.S. Pennsylvania State University, 2017.
- Technical Details:
- The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
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