Research into avian populations and communities
Research at Czech University of Life Sciences PragueThe modern landscape is strongly influenced by various human activities resulting in extensive exploitation of natural resources at the expense of biodiversity loss. This leads to the need to search for trade-offs between sustained use of natural resources and biodiversity conservation. Knowledge of community structure and of risks due to habitat management and species´ population attributes indicating environmental changes may be important for the sustainability of both natural resources use and bird richness patterns (species composition, diversity, rarity in different types of habitats). Our research team has long-term experience with research in three main topics:
- Landscape influenced by agriculture – our studies are focused on population dynamics, habitat requirements, breeding biology, survival and mortality causes including predation in populations of two model species with different habitat requirements: the northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus; need for wetlands and moist habitats) and the grey partridge (Perdix perdix; need for habitat heterogeneity).
- Post-industrial and post-mining landscape – our studies concentrate on avian community structure and associated effects of predation risks, vegetation structure and management history (e.g., spontaneous natural development versus conventional technical reclamation) throughout succession series from postdisturbance stands to mature forests.
- Secondary production forests – we are concerned with the bird richness patterns in these forests and the responsible management approaches including forest fragmentation, habitat heterogeneity and tree species composition.
Team leader
prof. Mgr. Miroslav Šálek, Dr.
Projects
- Multisensory datalogging as a tool for assessment of the impact of environmental changes on wildlife circadian activity
