Biology Commons^™

Food For Early Succession Birds: Relationships Among Arthropods, Shrub Vegetation, And Soil, Richard N. Conner, Daniel Saenz, Brent Burt

Faculty Publications

During spring and early summer, shrub- and herbaceous-level vegetation provides nesting and foraging habitat for many shrub-habitat birds. We examined relationships among arthropod biomass and abundance, foliage leaf surface area and weight, vegetation ground cover, soil characteristics, relative humidity, and temperature to evaluate what factors may influence arthropod food resources for birds. Relative humidity was inversely associated with arthropod biomass; as humidity increased biomass decreased (r = -0.44, P = 0.004). We failed to detect any relationships between deciduous foliage (surface area and weight) and arthropod biomass or abundance. However, both arthropod abundance (r = 0.30, P = 0.06) and …