UBC Undergraduate Research

Special management in the human dominated landscape : bird species of the Georgia Basin Leclerc, Marc-Antoine

Abstract

The expansion of urban and rural areas is likely to effect bird species within these areas because some do well in these habitat types while others do not. I used size, nesting substrate, diet, migratory pattern, and sociability to investigate if these life history traits determine the presence or absence of species in habitats dominated by humans and what native species will not as a consequence require special management. Based on the 5 traits size, diet, nesting substrate, migratory pattern and sociability, 47 species of birds found in the Georgia Basin were organized into guilds to determine whether or not the individual traits were associated with the presence or absence of the species within a human dominated habitat. Organizing the species into guilds was also used to determine if the 47 species could be used to represent the response of all native species. The association of each individual species to human dominated habitats was also determined. Size and nesting substrate were found to be significant while the three other traits were not. However, the trends obtained from all traits indicate that medium sized, omnivorous, migratory, social species that nest above 2 metres in height and on man-made structures are more likely to be found in human dominated habitats.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International