Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Foraging Ecology Of A Winter Bird Community In Southeastern Georgia, Rachel E. Mowbray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Classical views on community structure emphasized deterministic processes and the importance of competition in shaping communities. However, the processes responsible for shaping avian communities remain controversial. Attempts to understand distributions and abundances of species are complicated by the fact that birds are highly mobile. Many species migrate biannually between summer breeding grounds and wintering grounds. The goal of this study was to test four hypotheses that attempt to explain how migratory species integrate into resident assemblages of birds (Empty-Niche Hypothesis, Competitive-Exclusion Hypothesis, Niche-Partitioning Hypothesis, and Generalist-Migrant Hypothesis). I collected data on birds foraging during the winter of 2017-2018 in Magnolia …