RT journal article
T1 Preserving wintering frugivorous birds in agro‐ecosystems under land use change: lessons from intensive and super-intensive olive orchards
A1 Morgado, Rui
A1 Pedroso, Rui
A1 Porto, Miguel
A1 Herrera Vega, José Manuel
A1 Rego, Francisco
A1 Moreira, Francisco
A1 Beja, Pedro
A2 Biología
K1 agricultural intensification
K1 farmland birds
K1 frugivory
K1 fruit crops
K1 Mediterranean
K1 resource tracking
K1 super-intensive olive orchards
K1 wintering birds
AB 1. Fleshy fruit production is becoming more intensive worldwide, but how this af-fects frugivorous birds is poorly known. In the Mediterranean region, intensiveand super-intensive olive orchards are fast expanding, potentially affecting mil-lions of wintering songbirds. Here, we test the idea that intensification may ben-efit frugivorous birds, at least locally, due to increased fruit availability, whilenegatively affecting the wider wintering bird community due to intensive man-agement, structural simplification and landscape homogenisation.2. We estimated olive abundance and surveyed birds in early, mid- and late winter,at traditional, intensive and super-intensive orchards in southern Portugal. Weused Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities to relate species richness,prevalence and abundance to management intensity, winter period, olive avail -ability and landscape context, and evaluated the role of frugivory in modulatingobserved responses.3. Olive availability was much higher throughout the winter in more intensive than intraditional orchards, both in trees and on the ground. Frugivorous bird abundancewas higher in more intensive orchards, and the most abundant frugivorous species(blackcap, song thrush, robin) were positively affected by olive availability and/orincreasing landscape cover by olive orchards, while intensification level had rela-tively minor effects after accounting for other variables. Non-frugivorous richnessand abundance were higher in traditional orchards, and many non- frugivorousspecies had lower prevalence in more intensive orchards or were negatively af-fected by landscapes dominated by olive cultivation.4. Synthesis and applications. While negatively affecting the wider bird community,our results suggest that olive farming intensification can contribute to sustaininglarge numbers of frugivorous birds in the Mediterranean region. As frugivorousbirds are not seen as damaging by olive farmers, there is an opportunity to pro-mote their conservation in intensive and super-intensive orchards, which requiresmanagement to increase habitat heterogeneity, and to reduce risks such as mortal-ity associated with mechanical harvest and contamination with pesticide residues.Overall, we recommend that efforts to manage farmland biodiversity should con-sider the impacts and conservation opportunities of fruit crop intensification.
PB Wiley
SN 1365-2664
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/37334
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/37334
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-nov-2026