How do birds respond to the vegetation of a desert wetland in two contrasting seasons?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to assess how bird communities are grouped in vegetation types between the breeding and non-breeding seasons in two consecutive years as well as the relationship between bird species' distribution and the main plant communities, all in a desert wetland in northern Mexico. We used transects to determine the bird species' abundances and the height and cover of vegetation to obtain three main variables: foliage height diversity, life form diversity, and total foliage density. Cluster analyses using the bird species' relative abundances grouped similar vegetation types, regardless of the geographic distance between them, during the breeding season but not in the non-reproductive season. This result suggests that birds occupy the various habitats in a random way during the non-reproductive season. Most of the bird species were closely related to the vegetation volume and foliage height diversity in both seasons, while the diversity of plant growth forms was of little impo...