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Estimated Diets, Diet Overlap, And Winter Habitat Associations Of Four Grassland Sparrows In Florida Dry Prairie, Marianne Korosy
Estimated Diets, Diet Overlap, And Winter Habitat Associations Of Four Grassland Sparrows In Florida Dry Prairie, Marianne Korosy
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
North American grassland birds show long-term population declines that generally exceed the declines of other bird groups. Efforts to conserve grassland birds require knowledge of diet and habitat requirements during both the breeding and nonbreeding periods of annual life cycles. This dissertation investigated sparrow habitat associations within two defined plant communities of the dry prairie ecosystem, the dry-mesic and wet-mesic prairie, for four prescribed fire treatments over two consecutive winters. Grasshopper and Henslow’s sparrows showed higher relative abundance in wet-mesic prairie and Bachman’s Sparrows were more abundant in dry-mesic prairie across all fire treatments. Abundances of Grasshopper and Bachman’s sparrows …
Species And Habitat Interactions Of The Gopher Tortoise: A Keystone Species?, Christopher Catano
Species And Habitat Interactions Of The Gopher Tortoise: A Keystone Species?, Christopher Catano
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Species-species and species-habitat interactions have been demonstrated to be important in influencing diversity across a variety of ecosystems. Despite generalities in the importance of these interactions, appropriate mechanisms to explain them are absent in many systems. In sandhill systems of the southeast U.S., gopher tortoises have been hypothesized to be a crucial species in the maintenance of diversity and function. However, the mechanisms and magnitude in which they influence their communities and habitats have rarely been empirically quantified. I examined how habitat structure influences tortoise abandonment of burrows and how tortoise densities influence nonvolant vertebrate community diversity. Tortoise burrow abandonment …
Native Fire Regime As A Reference For Establishing Management Practices, Brean Duncan
Native Fire Regime As A Reference For Establishing Management Practices, Brean Duncan
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Our understanding of natural fire regimes in human-dominated landscapes is limited. Fire regimes operating in the pyrogenic ecosystems of Florida have been altered by fire suppression and fuel fragmentation. This is especially true of North Merritt Island, Florida, where human impacts have led to an incomplete knowledge of current fire regimes. We know that growing season fires frequently occurred within general return intervals and that many native terrestrial species require fire to remain viable. A 20-year plus period of fire suppression caused structural and compositional changes to vegetation/fuels that led to catastrophic fires and the decline of native species populations …
Testing The Peninsula Effect: Does It Affect Freshwater Crustaceans Inhabiting Ephemeral Wetlands On Florida's Ridges?, Debra Rinne
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The peninsula effect is a pattern of diversity wherein species richness decreases along a peninsula from base to tip and is attributed to three mechanisms: historical processes, habitat gradients, and immigration-extinction equilibrium. Numerous studies have reported conflicting results involving the existence, cause, and validity of the peninsula effect in part because they did not account for effects of history or habitat on species richness patterns and because most previous research focused on organisms that actively disperse, which could confound results with behavioral habitat selection. Florida poses an excellent opportunity to study the peninsula effect because of its geological history and …
Soil Microbial Community Dynamics In Florida Scrub Ecosystem, Maria Albarracin
Soil Microbial Community Dynamics In Florida Scrub Ecosystem, Maria Albarracin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Pyrogenic ecosystems are maintained by fires which vary in frequency, seasonality, and intensity. Florida oak-saw palmetto scrub ecosystem is characterized by fires occurring at intervals of 10-20 years. Diverse factors as private land acquisition and development has created a patchy distribution of scrub ecosystems and also interrupted the natural fire cycle. The effects of fire over plant regeneration and fauna habitat utilization of the scrub have been well characterized in previous research. In the present paper the objective is to characterize the short- and long-term fire effects on the soil microbial community. Fire effects were studied in a chronosequence, comprising …
Site Preparation Methods For Restoration Of Non-Native Pasturelands To Native Upland Habitat, Krisann Joie Kosel
Site Preparation Methods For Restoration Of Non-Native Pasturelands To Native Upland Habitat, Krisann Joie Kosel
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The flatwoods ecosystem of Florida has been heavily depleted over time but remains one of the most important systems to many threatened and endangered species. Areas that have been converted into non-native pastures may be restored to provide not only this invaluable ecosystem but also restore connectivity of the surrounding ecosystems. The pasture areas on The Disney Wilderness Preserve in central Florida were surveyed, and a conceptual plan for restoration was written in 1996. That same year a pilot study was developed to assess five methods for removing non-native pasture grasses. The treatments studied were single herbicide, single disc, multiple …