Wintering Grassland Bird Habitat Selection Following Summer Prescribed Fire in a Texas Gulf Coast Tallgrass Prairie

Fire Ecology

Table 3 Grassland bird community response to summer prescribed fire. We compared guild level and species-specific responses between winter 2001 (pre burning) and winter 2002 (post summer fire) in treatment and control plots at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, Texas, USA. We reported mean parameters alongside Bonferroni-corrected 95 % confidence intervals (Cl) and significance statistics for a year × treatment interaction.

Community characteristics	Control sites		Treatment sites		F _{3, 36}	P
Community characteristics	Unburned 2001	Unburned 2002	Pre-burn 2001	Post-burn 2002	F _{3, 36}	P
Avian density (ha⁻¹)^a	6.8 (3.9 to 9.6)	7.4 (4.5 to 10.2)	5.5 (2.6 to 8.4)	8.3 (5.4 to 11.1)	0.58	0.45
Species richness	6.3 (5.4 to 7.2)	5.7 (4.8 to 6.6)	6.4 (5.5 to 7.3)	5.2 (4.3 to 6.1)	0.43	0.51
Guild evenness	0.8 (2.6 to 8.4)	0.8 (2.6 to 8.4)	0.8 (2.6 to 8.4)	0.6 (2.6 to 8.4)	8.09	<0.01
Species density (ha ⁻¹ )
Sedge wren	0.9 (0.6 to 1.1)	1.2 (0.9 to 1.4)	0.9 (0.6 to 1.2)	0.1 (−0.2 to 0.3)	20.71	<0.01
Savannah sparrow	2.1 (0.1 to 4.1)	1.9 (−0.1 to 3.9)	1.5 (−0.5 to 3.5)	6.4 (4.3 to 8.4)	6.77	0.01
LeConte’s sparrow	2.8 (1.7 to 3.8)	3.4 (2.4 to 4.5)	1.8 (0.7 to 2.8)	0.1 (−1.0 to 1.1)	5.10	0.03
Eastern meadowlark	0.4 (0.1 to 0.7)	0.7 (0.4 to 1.1)	0.4 (0.1 to 0.7)	0.5 (0.2 to 0.8)	0.47	0.49

^a Avian densities were derived from line transect bird surveys, constrained to detections within 25 m of the transect zero-line, and were averaged for each transect across four visits during each winter extended to an estimate at the ha⁻¹ scale.