Christian Kampichler

• Sovon, Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology

The Russian breeding population of barnacle geese Branta leucopsis has shown a rapid increase in numbers since 1980, which has coincided with a southwest-wards breeding range expansion within the Russian Arctic. Here barnacle geese also started to occupy coastal and marsh land habitats, in which they were not know to nest on their traditional breed...

Avian influenza (AI) is a highly contagious viral disease that affects primarily poultry and wild water birds. There have been continued outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in both poultry and wild bird flocks. We aim to capitalise on the existence of large citizen datasets on abundance and distribution of 12 wild bird species to...

Migration of wild birds, particularly waterfowl, constitutes one mechanism by which Avian influenza (AI) is spread geographically. Good quantitative measures of the seasonal distribution of waterfowl can be useful in predicting the potential spread of AI outbreaks. Here we present European-scale modelling results for five species of duck, five spec...

Aim In many species, density‐dependent effects on reproduction are an important driver of population dynamics. However, it is rarely considered that the direction of density dependence is expected to vary over space and time depending on anti‐predator behaviour and predator community. Aggregation may allow for effective group mobbing against avian...

SOVON Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology organised the fieldwork for a new Dutch bird atlas over the period December 2012 until the breeding season of 2016. The main aims of the new atlas are to provide an up to date and comprehensive description of bird distribution and numbers in the breeding season as well as in winter. The fieldwork resulted in...

One of the main objectives of the Second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2) is to provide maps showing bird occurrence at a 10 x 10 km resolution for as many of the European breeding bird species as possible. With almost 120,000 10 x 10 km squares across Europe, it would be practically impossible to carry out comprehensive surveys in each spatial...

The BioScore 2.0 model analyses impacts of human-induced pressures on European terrestrial biodiversity. The model can be used for scenario analysis and the assessment of policy options. This report provides a detailed description of the methodology and examples of the model’s application.

Se evaluó si la coloración de las Nymphalidae frugívoras es un indicador de las unidades del paisaje. Se consideraron 4 condiciones de matriz agropecuaria (vegetación secundaria madura, vegetación secundaria joven, pastizales y cercos vivos) comparadas con 4 unidades de bosque (referente ecológico), en Tenosique, Tabasco, México. En cada unidad de...

Numbers of wintering Great Grey Shrikes (mainly from Scandinavia) in the Netherlands declined during the late 20th century. Since then a recovery became apparent, but numbers remained poorly known. In 2007/08-2012/13, nationwide surveys were organised through the website Waarneming.nl. Volunteer observers were asked to search predefined areas for s...

In the winters of 2010/11-2013/14 we conducted ship-based counts of waterbirds in 30 strip-transects in the deeper (sublittoral) parts of the Dutch Wadden Sea during high tide. We corrected the counts for distancedependent detection probability and extrapolated them to estimates of total numbers present in the offshore parts of the Wadden Sea (Tab....

The aim of this study was to generate an easy to use index to evaluate the ecological state of agricultural land from a sustainability perspective. We selected environmental indicators, such as the use of organic soil amendments (green manure) versus chemical fertilizers, plant biodiversity (including crop associations), variables which characteriz...

The measurement of species diversity has been a central task of community ecology from the mid 20th century onward. The conventional method of designing a diversity index is to combine values for species richness and assemblage evenness into a single composite score. The literature abounds with such indices. Each index weights richness and evenness...

The measurement of species diversity has been a central task of community ecology from the mid 20th century onward. The conventional method of designing a diversity index is to combine values for species richness and assemblage evenness into a single composite score. The literature abounds with such indices. Each index weights richness and evenness...

Numerous anthropogenic activities threaten the biodiversity found on earth. Because all ecological communities constantly experience temporal turnover due to natural processes, it is important to distinguish between change due to anthropogenic impact and the underlying natural rate of change. In this study, we used data sets on breeding bird commun...

2012. Ensambles de aves diurnas a través de un gradiente de perturbación en un paisaje en el sureste de México. Acta Zoológica Mexicana (n. s.), 28(2): 237-269. RESUMEN. Con el objetivo de evaluar la diversidad de aves que se presentan en un paisaje del trópico mexicano, en el año 2008 se evaluó la riqueza, abundancia y distribución de las aves y s...

In order to assess of a Mexican tropical landscape like birds shelter, in the 2008 we evaluated richness, abundance, distribution and foraging guilds of birds in eight landscape units, nested within two ecomosaics. Of 218 species identified, 207 were recorded during dry season and 119 in the rain season. Species composition differed between the two...

All ecological communities experience change over time. One method to quantify temporal variation in the patterns of relative abundance of communities is time lag analysis (TLA). It uses a distance-based approach to study temporal community dynamics by regressing community dissimilarity over increasing time lags (one-unit lags, two-unit lags, three...

Human land use and climate change are regarded as the main driving forces of present-day and future species extinction. They may potentially lead to a profound reorganisation of the composition and structure of natural communities throughout the world. However, studies that explicitly investigate both forms of impact--land use and climate change--a...

Relationship between species temperature index (STI) and species specialisation index (SSI) of Dutch breeding birds. (TIF)

Number of study plots of the Dutch Breeding Bird Monitoring Programme per year. (TIF)

Análisis comparativo de la estructura, diversidad y composición de comunidades arbóreas de un paisaje agropecuario en Tabasco, México Comparative analysis of structure, diversity and composition of tree communities in an agricultural landscape of Tabasco, Mexico la mayor riqueza (92 especies), mientras que los potreros fueron más pobres en especies...

In order to evaluate the effect of management on diversity, structure and composition of native arboreal flora in a mountainous Neotropical landscape, we studied 2 ecomosaics: montane rain forest, and the surrounding agricultural matrix. We inventoried 96 plots, registering 172 species. As a result of management, the ecomosaics differed in species...

La evaluación de la condición ecológica se sustenta en la detección de las causas y efectos de las modificaciones naturales y antropogénicas que generan amenazas sobre los servicios ambientales de los ecosistemas. En el Índice del Grado de Perturbación (IGP), los valores de referencia de los métricos, saturación de oxígeno disuelto (SOD), ortofosfa...

The Dutch Constant Effort Site (CES) programme has been operating since 1994 and is especially designed for the analysis of demographic parameters. Currently, it works with 40 active mist-netting sites and has a database with more than 250,000 records at its disposal. Here, we ask whether the effort invested in the programme is appropriate to detec...

El uso de especies indicadoras para caracterizar unidades ecológicas específicas es de gran importancia en la biología de la conservación/restauración. El objetivo del estudio fue identificar desde una perspectiva multitaxonómica, las especies que caracterizan distintas unidades de un paisaje. Así, se diferenciaron dos ecomosaicos: bosque tropical...

The use of indicator species to characterize specific ecological areas is of high importance in conservation/ restoration biology. The objective of this study was to identify indicator species of diverse taxa that characterize different landscape units, and to better understand how management alters species composition. We identified two ecomosaics...

In Mexico, nature reserves vary greatly in the size of the property, administration, financial budget and measures to protect against land use change and illegal hunting. We compared two private and two public reserves and observed an influence between the ownership structure and the patterns of removal of large and small seeds from the forest floo...

The population index for Wren derived from the Common Bird Census in The Netherlands over the period 1984-2010 shows marked annual fluctuations without a clear long-term trend. (Series of) winters with severe cold spells in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, and again in 2010, caused crashes from which the population recovered in four to five years, to f...

Classification is one of the most widely applied tasks in ecology. Ecologists have to deal with noisy, high-dimensional data that often are non-linear and do not meet the assumptions of conventional statistical procedures. To overcome this problem, machine-learning methods have been adopted as ecological classification methods. We compared five mac...

a b s t r a c t The ocellated turkey Meleagris ocellata (OT) is a large, unmistakable endemic bird of the Yucatan peninsula. The species has suffered a considerable loss of distributional area as well as local abundance between 1980 and 2000 and is classified as endangered according to Mexican norms. We applied Classification Trees and Random Fores...

El objetivo de la investigación fue determinar variaciones en la composición de Gasterópodos terrestres por efecto de la actividad humana en un paisaje perturbado en la zona montañosa de Tenosique, Tabasco, México. Se muestrearon cuatro unidades de la matriz agropecuaria (MA): acahuales maduros (AM) y jóvenes (AJ), potreros con árboles dispersos (P...

Despite the ecological and economical importance of tropical forests they are currently affected by human activities, mainly through deforestation and selective extraction. With the aim of making an opportune diagnosis of the condition of forests, we developed an ecological index based on qualitative and semi-quantitative data, allowing a quick dia...

Despite abundant literature on indicators for sustainable resource management, practical tools to help local users to apply its general concepts at a local to regional level are scarce. This means that decisions over land evaluation and land use at a local level are often not based on the formal application of indicators or decision support systems...

The objective of this work was to construct a simple index based on the presence/absence of different groups of soil macrofauna to determine the ecological quality of soils. The index was tested with data from 20 sites in South and Central Tabasco, Mexico, and a positive relation between the model and the field observations was detected. The index...

We studied the effects of land-use and land-cover changes on physical and chemical properties of soil in tropical South-East Mexico. In the study area of about 5500 km2, the dominant land use is pastureland (Pa seasonal agriculture (TA), fruit plantations (FP), sugarcane, (SC) secondary (SF) and primary forest (PF) and other not specified land-use...

Litterbags have been utilized in soil ecology for about 50 years. They are useful because they confine organic material and thus enable the study of decomposition dynamics (mass loss and/or nutrient loss through time, colonization by soil biota) in situ, i.e. under field conditions. Researchers can easily restrict or permit access to certain size c...

An index based on easy-to-estimate indicators was developed to assess the ecological condition of south Mexican cattle ranching farms. It focuses on the practices for conserving soil productivity and natural vegetation, as these are considered the most sensitive aspects of the local livestock-based agro-ecosystems. The index is the output of a mode...

The landscape or regional scale of analysis poses certain challenges and new possibilities for better understanding of space and time-related processes and changes. These changes can be caused by exogenous processes (e.g. climate change, dynamics on the global market, or technological advances), or may be a result of endogenous regional processes (...

Since CO2 enrichment alters the composition of live plant tissues, the ongoing global increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to affect plant–animal interactions. Although this is a widely explored field, test systems studied so far have not included mature trees. Our study uses the Swiss Canopy Crane and the web-FACE CO2 enrichment s...

Terrestrial ecosystems consist of mutually dependent producer and decomposer subsystems, but not much is known on how their interactions are modified by plant diversity and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Factorially manipulating grassland plant species diversity and atmospheric CO2 concentrations for five years, we tested whether high div...

The effects of habitat loss and fragmentation in tropical forests are difficult to separate, as they usually occur concurrently. In the state park La Sierra, in Tabasco, Mexico, the rainforest is being cleared for pasture, and fragments are being used by local inhabitants. This study examined the response of bird feeding guilds to habitat character...

Tropical countries suffer from a lack of financial resources to monitor and model sources and outcomes of soil degradation and, therefore, a scarcity of data. In this study it was tried to model superficial and subterranean water erosion based on basic environmental variables such as geological formation, soil type or vegetation cover — data which...

In this paper, we present the hierarchical variable dependencies that were obtained from raw data with the use of two machine learning techniques on an ecological data set. The data set contains features of field margins and the corresponding number of spider species inhabiting them. This data set was used before by domain experts to construct a fu...

The temporal predictability of soil microarthropod communities in stable forest ecosystems was analysed using data gathered from the literature and original data. Four studies were found with time series of at least five consecutive years; they all reported data on Collembola from temperate forests (as do the original data included). We applied the...

Mostly due to anthropogenic influences, moors in Central Europe are undergoing rapid succession. We tried to indicate five degradation stages of a peculiar type of moors, so-called kettle-hole moors, which are located in the region of terminal moraines left by the Pleistocene glaciation up until 10,000 years B.P. Using a database of more than 12,00...

We tested the suitability of the collembolan community as a bioindicator for assessing the effects of forest soil-liming and fertilization on the belowground decomposer community. Our investigation was based on a 5-year survey that took place in a German oak-hornbeam and spruce forest in which amelioration measures took place in 1988, 1994 and 1995...

Mycelia of cord-forming fungi show remarkable patterns of reallocation of biomass and nutrients indicating an important role of these, often extensive, organisms in the spatial translocation of energy and nutrients in forest soils. Despite the rich tradition of interaction studies between soil microarthropods and fungi, the spatial implications of...

Nutrient-poor grassland on a silty clay loam overlying calcareous debris was exposed to elevated CO2 for six growing seasons. The CO2 exchange and productivity were persistently increased throughout the experiment, suggesting increases in soil C inputs. At the same time, elevated CO2 lead to increased soil moisture due to reduced evapotransporation...

Despite their wide distribution and frequent occurrence, the spatial distribution patterns of the well-known gall-inducing insects Mikiola fagi (Hartig) and Neuroterus quercusbaccarum (L.) in the canopies of mature trees are poorly described. We made use of the Swiss Canopy Crane (SCC) near Basel, Switzerland, to gain access to the canopy of a mixe...

An arable landscape (150 ha) comprising a broad variety of soil types had been cultivated conventionally for many years. A small section had been intensively managed (hops), while another had been used as grassland. For 2 years at the beginning of our study, all arable land was cultivated with cereals only. After that, management was changed to int...

Enclosed model ecosystems, or microcosms, have become a major research tool in soil ecology. Due to the speed, statistical power and mechanistic insights attainable with laboratory-based microcosm experiments, these have added considerably to our ecological knowledge. However, soil ecologists agree that, due to problems of scale and artificiality,...

Despite the fact that their objects of study live in a highly complex and irregular environment, soil zoologists have not yet made use of the advantage of fractal geometry in their work. Less than 1% of papers published during the last 3 years that dealt with fractal applications in the field of biological and environmental sciences were directed a...

The relationship of local (LSR) versus regional species richness (RSR) provides an insight into patterns of species diversity. We examined communities of surface-dwelling Collembola in ten differently sized, temperate dry grasslands. To register genuine manifestations of saturation or proportional sampling, accurate determination of species pools i...

Field margins are grassy strips or banks between arable fields or meadows that are not cultivated or ploughed and contain only single shrubs or trees. They not only support beneficial arthropods, e.g. predators of crop pests, but can also be of potential value to species of concern, making them a critical target for conservation of biodiversity in...

We applied novel modelling techniques (neural networks, tree-based models) to relate total abundance and species number of Collembola as well as abundances of dominant species to habitat characteristics and compared their predictive power with simple statistical models (multiple regression, linear regression, land-use-specific means). The data used...

Samples of two perpendicular transects from an even-aged Norway spruce (Picea abies) forest were used for geostatistical analysis of forest floor water content (WC), pH, substrate-induced respiration (SIR, a measure of microbial biomass), and N mineralization (Nmin). Nmin data did not fulfil the stationarity assumptions of geostatistics and had to...

Using field mesocosms maintained for 6 months in an acid spruce forest, we investigated the influence of microarthropods on biomass, structure and function of the soil microbial community. In the litter layer (L/F layer), the re-immigration of mesofauna into mesocosms did not significantly affect substrate-induced respiration (SIR), biomass C, biom...

Field mesocosms can overcome the simplicity and deficiencies of laboratory based experimental designs. This study deals with a number of possible side effects of a mesocosm technique that involves deep-freezing of soil monoliths to eliminate soil Fauna, wrapping in nets of various mesh-size to control faunal immigration and replanting in the field....

Despite the fact that their objects of study live in a highly complex and irregular environment, soil zoologists have not yet made use of the advantage of fractal geometry in their work. Less than 1% of papers published during the last 3 years that dealt with fractal applications in the field of biological and environmental sciences were directed a...

 Recently, a comparative study revealed that the predominately used most probable number (MPN) method yields seriously biased estimates for active soil ciliates (Protozoa). The direct counting method, in contrast, gave reliable and reproducible data with a high level of discrimination between the invstigated sites between the investigated sites. Ho...

The effects of grazing microarthropods on microbial biomass, protease and urease activity, inorganic N-content of litter, anaerobic N-mineralization and pH were assessed regularly in microcosms containing 80 and 130 g of spruce litter and a mixed microarthropod fauna in two experiments with a duration of 84 and 105 days, respectively. Enzyme activi...

In model terrestrial ecosystems maintained for three plant generations at elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increases in photosynthetically fixed carbon were allocated below ground, raising concentrations of dissolved organic carbon in soil. These effects were then transmitted up the decomposer food chain. Soil microbial biomas...

Although soil organisms play an essential role in the cycling of elements in terrestrial ecosystems, little is known of the impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations on soil microbial processes. We determined microbial biomass and activity in the soil of multitrophic model ecosystems housed in the Ecotron (NERC Centre for Population Biolo...

We investigate the response of soil microorganisms to atmospheric CO2 and temperature change within model terrestrial ecosystems in the Ecotron. The model communities consisted of four plant species (Cardamine hirsuta, Poa annua, Senecio vulgaris, Spergula arvensis), four herbivorous insect species (two aphids, a leaf-miner, and a whitefly) and the...

A field study in an acidic spruce forest soil using soil mesocosms was conducted to investigate the effects of mesofauna and macrofauna on exchangeable cations, organic matter content, base saturation, and Ca-lactate extractable nutrients. In the field, intact soil monoliths were taken from the ground, defaunated by deep-freezing and wrapped in net...

A central issue of community ecology is to explain patterns of species diversity. Recent studies concentrate on the extent to which local communities are determined locally and/or regionally. Commonly, these investigations are carried out by regressions of local species richness (LSR) on regional species richness (RSR). Asymptotic plots for LSR vs....

Since the early days of soil zoology, researchers have repeatedly discussed the importance of edaphic environmental characteristics for the distribution and abundance of soil animals. An extensive soil-biological survey at the experimental farm of the FAM Munich Research Association for Agricultural Ecosystems provided the opportunity of testing th...

Three soil types-Calcaric Phaeozem, Eutric Cambisol and Dystric Lithosol-in large container pots were experimentally contaminated with heavy metals at four different levels (light pollution: 300 ppm Zn, 100 ppm Cu, 50 ppm Ni, 50 ppm V and 3 ppm Cd; medium pollution: twofold concentrations; heavy pollution: threefold concentrations; uncontaminated c...

In a field study using soil mesocosms in an acid spruce forest soil we investigated the effects of mesofauna and macrofauna on microbial biomass, dissolved organic matter, and N cycling. Intact soil monoliths were taken from the ground, defaunated by deep-freezing, and wrapped in nets of various mesh-sizes to control re-immigration of different fau...

Interactions among bacteria, fungi and invertebrates are important for many soil processes. Numerous review articles and books give a comprehensive survey of the wide range of possible mechanisms of interaction (Anderson et al. 1984; Fitter et al. 1985; Edwards et al. 1988; Verhoef and Brussaard 1990; Lussenhop 1992). These include mainly the grazi...

Equipment and handling methods for the preparation of soil mesocosms were developed. The mesocosms were used to investigate the interrelationships between mesofauna and microflora in a coniferous forest soil. Soil monoliths were taken from the ground, defaunated by deep-freezing, wrapped in nets to control reimmigration of different faunal size-cla...

It has been previously demonstrated that fractal habitat features, combined with the allometric relationship between body size and metabolic rate, can sufficiently predict the biomass distribution in arthropod communities. This study shows that the relationship between biomass B and abundance N in a community of soil microarthropods is flatter than...

The moth Archanara geminipuncta is totally eliminated by harvest and can be found in old reed stands. The effects on other endofauna species appear less clear: some species are not affected by harvest at all, others react in opposite ways according to site. For example the gall-making midge Lipara similis nearly disappears at one site, yet shows in...

Like the majority of natural objects, soil pores can be described by means of fractal geometry. Since the area of a fractal surface depends on the scale of measurement, the amount of available pore area for different size classes of non-burrowing soil animals should depend on the fractal dimension of the soil pore surface following the relationship...

Activity abundance data of epigeic Collembola in dry-turf grassland in E Austria are analysed. Dominance structure remained stable over 1.5 yr. The even rank activity bundance distribution and the lack of satellite species allow the conclusion of a late successional state of the community due to lack of immigrating comperitors because of geographic...

In a dry-turf grassland ecosystem in the east of Austria, cushions of Dianthus lumnitzeri Wiesbaur (Caryophyllaceae) were inspected. The abundance, community structure, and vertical distribution of hemi- and euedaphic Collembola and Cryptostigmata were studied. Notable differences in the strategies of resource use by these two groups were detected....

Summary The distribution patterns and habitat preferences of nine surface- and litter-dwelling CoUembola recorded from eastern Lower Austria are presented. Eight species prove to be of southeast european provenance, six of them are considered typical of the Austrian pannonic region: Entomobrya hand- schini, Orchesella albo/asciata, and Prorastriope...

2 enrichment stimulates N-mineralisation and enzyme

A new device for sampling corticolous microarthropods from branches of forest canopies – The device is composed of a transparent plastic tube which is subdivided in two equal sections longitudinally. For sampling the device is mounted around the branches. Then, with a high pressure water spray nozzle as used in gardening the arthropods are removed...

Bird populations are not constant in time but experience variation due to internal dynamics or to the action of external forces such as climatic change or habitat destruction. They are often used as indicators for the trends of wider biodiversity because our knowledge on them is generally good [1]. Beginning in the early 1980s, a Europe-wide networ...

RESUMEN Los bosques cumplen funciones fundamentales en la estabilización de los ecosistemas, constituyen el sostén de gran parte de la diversidad biológica, contribuyen en mantener la calidad del aire, del agua y del suelo, e intervienen en la regulación de la temperatura del planeta. Sin embargo, estos se encuentran fuertemente afectados por las a...