Marc I Förschler

Black Forest National Park · Department for Ecological Monitoring, Research and Species Protection

Most farmland birds experience strong declines across Europe. These declines are typically associated with agricultural intensification but research on alternative local causes remains scarce. We investigated variation in reproductive success as a potential driver for the observed population declines in a fragmented population of the Meadow Pipit A...

Low intensity grazing is an increasingly used tool in conservation. It creates beneficial conditions for biodiversity by shaping structural diverse habitats. An important resource provided by grazing are dung pats because many species are associated with those, especially arthropods. Because most birds depend on arthropods as a food source, dung pa...

Handschuh M, Bickel M, Apel R, Günther D, Harry I, Martin R, Reese L, Reinschmidt M, Rinder M, Rücker P, Schnaible K, Stadler A, Wichmann F, Wuhrer J & Förschler MI 2023: In-situ and ex-situ measures to save the Citril Finch Carduelis citrinella, a European endemic mountain bird on the edge. Vogelwarte 61: 27–45. Summary: Citril Finch Carduelis ci...

1. The diversity in meadows is affected by numerous aspects, such as the amount and type of fertilisation and the timing and frequency of cutting. The effects of mowing on the diversity of plants and insects have been studied in detail. However, the effect of mulching (vegetation is cut, shredded, and left in place, instead of being removed) on ins...

We report on a structural complexity enhancement (SCE) experiment that was designed to test ecological restoration measures in the Black Forest National Park, Germany. The main goal was to understand as to whether the creation of standing and downed deadwood within previously managed, single-layered Norway spruce (Picea abies L.) forests accelerate...

Die Hornisgrinde ist mit 1163 m NN die höchste Erhebung des Nordschwarzwalds und besitzt eine besondere Bedeutung für die lokale Vogelwelt. Im Hochmoor und in den angrenzenden Bergwäldern brüten mit Wiesenpieper, Alpen-Ringdrossel, Auerhuhn und Dreizehenspecht gleich vier Arten, die in Baden- Württemberg akut vom Aussterben bedroht sind. Darüber hi...

Rothirsche besitzen durch ihr Nahrungsverhalten einen großen Einfluss auf die Entwicklung von Waldökosystemen, so dass genaue Informationen zu ihrer Nahrungszusammensetzung eine wichtige Grundlage für das Wildtiermanagement bilden. Neue Ergebnisse zu ihrer Nahrungswahl mittels DNA-Metabarcoding der Losung aus vier Nationalparken in Mittelgebirgsreg...

Trockene Heiden sind ein nach der Fauna-Flora-Habitat-Richtlinie geschützter Lebensraumtyp. Die vorliegende Studie nutzt dessen landesweite Erfassung in Baden-Württemberg. Sie wurde 2018 initiiert, um die Kulisse für landwirtschaftliche Förderungen zu öffnen. Ziel der Arbeit war, (1) die Ausdehnung Trockener Heiden zu analysieren und die Pflege nat...

The species of the genus Ramazzottius (Ramazzottiidae, Eutardigrada) are among the most common and widespread tardigrade species in the world. Most of the 28 Ramazzottius species have been described only with morphological characters which were most of the time represented only with drawings. The discovery of a new species of this genus in the Blac...

Der Zitronenzeisig (Carduelis citrinella) ist eine der wenigen endemischen Vogelarten Europas. Das Weltareal der Art ist auf höhere Gebirgsregionen in Südwest- und Mitteleuropa beschränkt. Die kleine Bergvogelart ist vor allem durch Nutzungsänderungen in ihren Brutgebieten sowie durch den Klimawandel bedroht. Großräumige, gezielte Schutzmaßnahmen s...

National parks play an important role in protecting global biodiversity. The development and implementation of a biodiversity assessment program that enables the analysis and evaluation of biodiversity development under protection is a task of the national park administration. This paper presents the sampling design and assessment methods used for...

This study documents the first records of Iberian Chiffchaff Phylloscopus ibericus in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Four records of Iberian Chiffchaffs exist since 1995, and three of them come from a small area in the Northern Black Forest close to Freudenstadt. All records are of singing males that occupied territories in young, spruce-d...

Die Ringdrossel ist eine charakteristische Bergvogelart, die aus den lichten Bergwäldern des Alpenraums und den Hochlagen der Mittelgebirge kaum wegzudenken ist. In den letzten Jahrzehnten sind allerdings deutlich negative Bestandstrends festzustellen. Während die Ringdrossel in den Mittelgebirgen teilweise kurz vor dem lokalen Aussterben steht, si...

Garden Dormouse ( Eliomys quercinus ) populations have shown a drastic decline over the last 20-30 years, the reasons for this decline are still unknown. In wild animals, body mass is a good indicator of fitness and survival probability, especially in hibernating species like dormice. Fat accumulation before the onset of hibernation and juvenile gr...

• Among the many concerns for biodiversity in the Anthropocene, recent reports of flying insect loss are particularly alarming, given their importance as pollinators, pest control agents, and as a food source. Few insect monitoring programmes cover the large spatial scales required to provide more generalizable estimates of insect responses to glob...

Das Haselhuhn (Tetrastes bonasia rupestris) ist in Baden-Württemberg vor allem aufgrund Lebensraumverlusts erloschen. Im Nationalpark Schwarzwald, Teil des EG-Vogelschutzgebiets Nordschwarzwald, entstehen derzeit durch unterschiedliche Prozesse wahrscheinlich wieder geeignete Haselhuhnhabitate in größerem Umfang. Dies wirft die Frage nach einer mög...

Most European migratory birds are broad-front migrants. In Southwest Germany the preferred migratory direction in autumn is NE to SW. If these birds encounter mountain ranges on their way, spatial concentrations of the broad-front migration appear. This phenomenon is also known from the Northern Black Forest. During the last three decades we studie...

In the present study, we investigate the courtship activities of the Western Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus on a traditional lek in the Black Forest National Park (southwest Germany). The study is based on monitoring using camera traps. During the period of investigation (2016–2019) we took 1,772 camera trap events of Western Capercaillie. 1,702 of...

Capsule Open forest stands with high levels of sunlight and Bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus cover are important for Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus broods. Aims To study the habitat use by Capercaillie broods in the Black Forest, Germany. Methods Habitat characteristics were mapped at locations where indirect signs and observations of Capercaillie bro...

Structural complexity enhancement (SCE) is a forest restoration approach aiming to maintain or increase biodiversity in managed, secondary forests. Whether the diversity of wild bees also benefits from such restoration measures in temperate forests is not well studied. We conducted a restoration experiment in secondary spruce forests on twelve 50 ×...

In the late winter of 2018/2019, for the second time after the winter of 1984/1985, large numbers of Bramblings (Fringilla montifringilla) could be documented in the Northern Black Forest (Baden-Württemberg). From 17 February until 25 March 2019, large flocks of up to 500,000 Bramblings rested in the conifer forests near Freudenstadt and fed primar...

This study documents the first records in the Black Forest range for Rustic Bunting in autumn 2017 and Little Bunting in autumn 2020. Both birds were roosting in habitats that resembled those found in their breeding habitat. These observations induced us to compile all previous records of both species within the federal state of Baden-Württemberg....

In den mitteleuropäischen Mittelgebirgen zählt die Beweidung mit Rindern zu den seit langer Zeit etablierten Nutzungsformen in der Kulturlandschaft. Die gegenwärtige Diskussion um Maßnahmen gegen den Rückgang von Insektenarten und der Insekten-Biomasse berücksichtigt die positiven Wirkungen der Beweidung nur unzureichend. Mit Rindern beweidete Fläc...

Im Nationalpark sind hinsichtlich des Naturschutzes zwei große Aufgaben zu erfüllen: Einerseits soll im Prozessschutz Natur frei von menschlichen Einflüssen sein dürfen. Andererseits gibt es im Nordschwarzwald seltene und geschützte Arten und nur hier existierende Biotope, die es zu bewahren gilt. Das Modul Arten- und Biotopschutz beschäftigt sich...

Among the many concerns for biodiversity in the Anthropocene, recent reports of flying insect loss are particularly alarming, given their importance as pollinators and as a food source for many predators. Few insect monitoring programs cover large spatial scales required to provide more generalizable estimates of insect responses to global change d...

Protected areas worldwide are important to maintaining biodiversity and providing recreational opportunities to society. However, many protected areas are affected by unprecedented, large and severe natural disturbances, like bark beetle outbreaks. Due to the contrasting responses of different taxonomic groups to disturbance events and largely nega...

The integration of morphological data and data from molecular genetic markers is important for examining the taxonomy of meiofaunal animals, especially for eutardigrades, which have a reduced number of morphological characters. This integrative approach has been used more frequently, but several tardigrade taxa lack molecular confirmation. Here, we...

Zusammenfassung Im Jahr 2017 konnte erstmals im Grindenschwarzwald zwischen Kniebis und Hornisgrinde an mehreren Stellen die Blauflügelige Ödlandschrecke gefunden werden. Bevorzugt besie-delt wurden Schotterparkplätze, Schotterwege, aber auch in geringerer Dichte die beweideten Grinden. Die größten bekannten Populationen waren auf einer Brachfläche...

We report new records of Sceliphron curvatum from the northern Black Forest.

In 2015, we investigated bird populations in a protected forest and a commercial forest with low management intensity and compared our results with data from the same study areas from 1994. The investigation 2015 showed increased bird densities in both the protected forest (29 species) as well as in the commercial forest (32 species) compared to 19...

As a bird species of the uplands and mountains, the Alpine Ring Ouzel is considered particularly susceptible to potential direct and indirect effects of climate change; it is now considered as critically endangered in Baden-Württemberg. In this context, we investigated changes in the species’ population size and distribution in the northern Black F...

In fast allen mitteleuropäischen Waldgesellschaften ist die Waldkiefer (Pinus sylvestris L.) nicht konkurrenzfähig und würde dort von Natur aus, also in der potentiellen natürlichen Vegetation, nicht vorkommen. Erst unter Extrembedingungen, wenn die Schatt- und Halbschattbaumarten ausfallen, kann sie Waldgesellschaften bilden. Eine Zwischenstellung...

Conclusions: Garden dormice are still widely distributed within the Black Forest NLP and occur mainly in spruce dominated forest at higher altitudes. • Garden dormice rarely occur in sympatry with the two other glirid species. • There is no clear genetic separation between the study sites, indicating a substantial gene flow. • Current genetic varia...

We report the results of a survey of the Tree Pipit Anthus trivialis breeding population in the Northern Black Forest (Grindenschwarzwald) in 2015. Our study documents in total a number of at least 172 territories for the area. Most of the Tree Pipit territories were found on the historically deforested and pastured mountaintops (so called „Grinden...

Northern Ring Ouzels breed on the British Isles and in Fennoscandia, the wintering areas are in southern Spain and in North Africa. From 2012 to 2018, every year large numbers of resting Northern Ring Ouzels were recorded during migration in spring and autumn on the mountain tops of the Northern Black Forest (Grindenschwarzwald). Migration towards...

Übersicht über Prozesse/Störungen, die durch Weidetiere auf unterschiedlichen Raumebenen (Makro-, Meso- und Mikroskala) induziert werden und von denen (ausgewählte) Biozönosen/Arten profitieren

In wheatears and related species (‘open-habitat chats’), molecular phylogenetics has led to a comprehensively revised understanding of species relationships and species diversity. Phylogenetic analyses have suggested that, in many cases, phenotypic similarities do not reflect species’ relationships, revealing traditionally defined genera as non-mon...

Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) are considered as indicator species of species rich, open conifer dominated forests and still occur over large parts of their natural range. In Western- and Central Europe populations are mainly restricted to mountain ranges, many of them are declining or became extinct. In the Black Forest, South-Western Germany, th...

Genetic and phenotypic mosaics, in which various phenotypes and different genomic regions show discordant patterns of species or population divergence, offer unique opportunities to study the role of ancestral and introgressed genetic variation in phenotypic evolution. Here, we investigated the evolution of discordant phenotypic and genetic diverge...

The European bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus L. (Ericaceae), is an important food resource for many mammals, insects and birds in forests, including the threatened capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus). For capercaillie, a sufficient amount of bilberry fruits is crucial to store enough body fat for the winter period. Studies have shown that V. myrtillus re...

Man-made small game meadows in forest-dominated landscapes may become important refuge habitats for invertebrates under the currently observed severe decline of grasslands characterized by low land-use intensity. We studied the ground beetle community of 24 small meadows that are used as grazing grounds for red deer (Cervus elaphus) in the sub-mont...

DEUTSCH: In Deutschland sollen nach der Nationalen Strategie zur biologischen Vielfalt (NBS) bis 2020 auf 2 % (714 000 ha) der terrestrischen Fläche Prozessschutzflächen als Wildnisgebiete ausgewiesen sein. Nach den bisher konzipierten Kriterien sind nur Nationalparks eine bereits existierende Kulisse. Sie nehmen ca. 0,6 % der terrestrischen Fläche...

Due to habitat degradation and a loss of food resources, the Wryneck has experienced a severe population decline in Baden-Württemberg in recent years. In contrast to this general trend, the observations of displaying Wrynecks on storm-deforested sites in the Northern Black Forest (900 to 1100 m above m.s.l.) have increased significantly since 2004...

The succession of glacials and interglacials during the Pleistocene strongly influenced the diversification and distribution patterns in birds. In contrast to species of temperate regions, open-habitat specialists should have experienced range expansion during the longer glacial periods, while range contractions occurred during the shorter intergla...

Intraspecific variation of passerine song may influence mate choice and consequently provides a potential mechanism for premating reproductive isolation in birds. Notable geographic variation of songs is particularly common in widespread bird species, such as the coal tit Periparus ater (Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae) having a large trans-Palearctic...

Intraspecific variation of passerine song may influence mate choice and consequently provides a potential mechanism for premating reproductive isolation in birds. Notable geographic variation of songs is particularly common in widespread bird species, such as the coal tit Periparus ater (Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae) having a large trans-Palearctic...

The spruce mast in winter 2014/2015 offered an abundant food supply for granivorous birds in the Northern Black Forest, attracting disproportionally large numbers of wintering Common Crossbills. During an extensive period with a closed snow cover, natural mineral sources were not available to these birds. To cover their mineral needs, many Crossbil...

We report the results of a complete survey of the Meadow Pipit breeding population in the Black Forest National Park area in 2015. Compared with 1995–1997, the survey documents a substantial decline from the initial 85 territories to a current number of 28. While local populations remained rather stable on historically deforested mountain tops (“Gr...

Im Jahr 2015 war im Nordschwarzwald ein sogenanntes Fichtenmastjahr, was zu sehr hohen Beständen des Erlenzeisigs geführt hat. Bereits im Februar durchstreiften viele große Trupps von bis zu 150 Individuen die Nadelwaldgebiete im Nordschwarzwald und profitierten von dem reichen Nahrungsangebot an Fichtensamen. Ein Teil dieser Erlenzeisige zog weite...

How many species may occur in a given area is one of the first questions in recently established nature reserves. The Black Forest National Park has been established in 2014 to represent montane and high-montane forest ecosystems and to protect natural forest development and all related processes. So far the core area (34%) ist strictly protected b...

Mit diesem Beitrag möchten wir das naturwissenschaftliche Monitoringkonzept des Nationalparks Schwarzwald vor- und zur Diskussion stellen. Die Forstwissenschaftliche Tagung bietet ein exzellentes Forum da wir zusammen mit verschiedensten Forschungsinstituten die wichtigen wissenschaftlichen Fragen von heute, aber auch die von Morgen beantworten möc...

In the old growth spruce-fir forest “Wilder See”, a long-term protected zone of the Black Forest National Park (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany), the phenology of two associated polypore fungus species on Picea abies logs, Fomitopsis pinicola and the rare red-data list species Antrodiella citrinella were investigated. We combined detailed field studies...

Im Winter 2014/2015 konnte erstmals für den Schwarzwald die Überwinterung einer Sperbereule dokumentiert werden. Der Vogel hielt sich insbesondere im Gipfelbereich der Badener Höhe (Stadtkreis Baden-Baden) auf und nutzte für die Nahrungssuche die dortigen Brutgebietsähnlichen, totholzreichen Sukzessionflächen. Haupt-Beutetiere waren verschiedene Wü...

The realized distribution of animals is often delimited by climatic factors which define, next to the specific habitat and food availability, their species-specific potential distribution. We studied the environmental limitations affecting the realized breeding and wintering distributions of the Citril Finch (Carduelis citrinella), one of the few e...

Die Diskussion über einen möglichen Nationalpark im Nordschwarzwald ist derzeit in vollem Gange. Ziel der Nationalpark-Initiative ist es, eine Fläche von mindestens 10.000 Hektar mittel-bis langfristig für den Ablauf natürlicher Prozesse im Wald freizustellen. In einer 30-jährigen Anfangsphase besteht dabei in Teilbereichen die Möglichkeit, bestimm...