Community-level response to different human disturbances and land use of small mammals in two marshland habitat patches in Hungary

Abstract

Marshlands are important ecosystems that provide valuable habitats for wildlife communities. We investigated the small mammal community-level response to different human disturbances and land use in the Kis-Balaton Landscape Protection Area, which is an endangered marshland ecosystem of Hungary. Land use, conservation management and other human disturbances (burning, mowing) together with unfavorable weather conditions have caused the degradation of the original homogeneous sedgy marshland on both sampled areas. We measured the species turnover between the different periods separated by the habitat changes. Our results suggest that populations of the habitat-specialist species of marshland areas (e.g. endangered Hungarian subspecies of root vole) are sensitive to the negative effects of environment and human disturbances. The combined effect of human disturbances and the stochastic processes of the environment can cause the disappearance and substitution of character species stabilizing the communities, which in turn leads to the modification of species composition and structure of small mammal assemblages.