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Changes in bird distribution in a Central European country between 1985–1989 and 2001–2003

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Abstract

European birds have been significantly affected by dramatic environmental changes during the last decades. The effects of these changes on species richness and distribution in particular countries are still poorly understood because of a lack of high-quality, large-scale data standardized over time. This is especially true in Central and Eastern Europe. On a model group of birds in the Czech Republic (countrywide atlas mapping data), we examined whether long-term changes of species richness and distribution between 1985–1989 and 2001–2003 differed among groups of species defined by their habitat requirements, type of distribution in Europe, migratory strategy and the degree of national legal protection. Further, we investigated the effects of colonizers and local extinctions on these changes. Whereas the number of species in the whole country remained the same in both periods (208 species), species composition had changed. Increasing occupancy (i.e., number of occupied mapping squares) was observed in species of forest and wetland habitats, in short-distance migrants and in non-protected species. Southern species also positively changed their occupancy, but this pattern disappeared after the inclusion of six species dependent on extensively cultivated farmland that went extinct between mappings. The overall occupancy of all species together showed positive changes after excluding colonizers and extinct species. We suggest that the improvement of environmental conditions after 1990 caused the stability of or increased the distribution of common birds in the Czech Republic, and it was the disappearance of specific farmland practices that might have caused the loss of several species.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks belong to all the volunteers who participated in the collection of data needed to write this paper. We thank Karel Weidinger, Martin Paclík and two anonymous referees for their critical comments on the manuscript. Pamela and Kenneth C. Lewis improved the English. The study was supported by the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (KJB601110919) and Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (MSM 6198959212). The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology and Laboratory of Ornithology, Faculty of Science, Palacký University, tř. Svobody 26, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Koleček & Jiří Reif

  2. Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Benátská 2, 128 01, Praha 2, Czech Republic

    Jiří Reif

  3. Department of Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Kamýcká 1176, 165 21, Praha 6, Czech Republic

    Karel Šťastný & Vladimír Bejček

Authors
  1. Jaroslav Koleček
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  2. Jiří Reif
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  3. Karel Šťastný
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  4. Vladimír Bejček
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jaroslav Koleček.

Additional information

Communicated by F. Bairlein.

Appendix

Appendix

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Table 3 List of species and their habitat requirements, migratory strategy, European distribution and legal protection status in the Czech Republic
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Koleček, J., Reif, J., Šťastný, K. et al. Changes in bird distribution in a Central European country between 1985–1989 and 2001–2003. J Ornithol 151, 923–932 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0532-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0532-x

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