Mechanisms That Generate Resource Pulses in a Fluctuating Wetland.

ABSTRACT: Animals living in patchy environments may depend on resource pulses to meet the high energetic demands of breeding. We developed two primary a priori hypotheses to examine relationships between three categories of wading bird prey biomass and covariates hypothesized to affect the concentration of aquatic fauna, a pulsed resource for breeding wading bird populations during the dry season. The fish concentration hypothesis proposed that local-scale processes concentrate wet-season fish biomass into patches in the dry season, whereas the fish production hypothesis states that the amount of dry-season fish biomass reflects fish biomass production during the preceding wet season. We sampled prey in drying pools at 405 sites throughout the Florida Everglades between December and May from 2006-20

SUBMITTER: Botson BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4957811 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature