Biodiv Sci ›› 2005, Vol. 13 ›› Issue (6): 496-506.  DOI: 10.1360/biodiv.050068

• Editorial • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Avian community response to vegetation succession caused by the pine wood nematode in Zhejiang, China

Keyi Jiang1 , Mingjian Yu1 , Ping Ding1* Xuehong Xu1, Ping Jiang2 , Chengmei Zhou3 , Gao Lu3   

  1. 1 College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029
    2 Forest Pest Management and Quarantine Station of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou 310020
    3 Xiangshan Forest Pest Control and Quarantine Station, Ningbo 315000
  • Received:2005-03-16 Revised:2005-05-29 Online:2005-11-20 Published:2005-11-20

Abstract: The pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilis) has been causing widespread losses to pines in China since it was first found in 1982. It can bring about forest degradation. To study the effect of  nematode-induced forest succession on avian communities, we chose three forest types at different seral stages, including evergreen broad-leaved coppice infested by the pine wood nematode for five years and ev-ergreen broad-leaved forest infested for 12 years, both from Xiangshan County, Zhejiang, and one 40-year-old evergreen broad-leaved forest from Tiantong National Forest Park, Zhejiang. The results showed that bird species richness and diversity were significantly greater in the two infested evergreen broad-leaved forest types with little difference between them, while there existed little difference in bird abundance and evenness in the three types. It suggested that the evergreen broad-leaved forests at early successional stage had higher bird species richness and diversity. Stepwise multiple regression models of bird community vari-ables indicated that microhabitat feature such as stand age was an important predictor of bird community composition.