Effects of environmental heterogeneity on birds and bats in anthropogenic landscapes

• Applicant: Dr. Kirsten Jung
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433326865

Vegetational heterogeneity within anthropogenic landscapes plays an essential role in determining vertebrate abundance and diversity. Vegetation facilitates movement across landscapes, provides essential resources such as food and shelter and provides cover from visual oriented predators. Vegetation can also shelter from direct human disturbances, such as noise and artificial illumination. Both, human induced noise and artificial light at night affect wildlife in various ways. Effects include changes in diurnal rhythms, and disruption of species interactions and movement by creating barrier effects within landscapes. Within anthropogenic landscapes, the amount and structure of vegetation differs greatly between managed forests, grasslands and urban areas. Meanwhile the amount and frequency of human disturbance (e.g., light and noise) increases from forest and grasslands to urban areas. I will assess the relative contribution of vegetational heterogeneity and human disturbance influencing temporal dynamics in taxonomic and acoustic composition of assemblages across landscapes. Hereby I will predominantly focus on birds and bats but extending the acoustic analysis also to other vocal animal species, to account for potential cross-taxonomic acoustic interactions (e.g., acoustic interferences). I will then focus on forests, where anthropogenic disturbance can be assumed to be minimal and use the joint multi-site experiments in forests to quantify the effect of vegetational change on species process-related and functional niche dimensions. Finally, I will integrate the human dimension shaping non-human biota, focusing on urban areas, where people strongly determine vegetational heterogeneity and disturbance. Here I will assess dynamic responses in bird and bat assemblages, and potential plasticity in the functional niche dimension, and assess the human perception of acoustic diversity. Results will give crucial information about temporal dynamics of taxonomic and acoustic assemblages composition across landscapes. I will provide fundamental insight for the understanding of functional niches and their plasticity with land use change. Integrating the human dimension will advance our understanding on the role of humans in shaping non-human biota and the human perception of acoustic diversity. Results will further provide fundamental knowledge on how local management action can be targeted to support biodiversity of vocal animal communities and whether and how small changes in management, configuration and in anthropogenic landscapes can make a difference and benefit biodiversity and thus likely promote also human wellbeing.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories