Aves como espécies chave em áreas em restauração: uma abordagem integrativa

Abstract

While it is unquestionable that land degradation and water resources generate drastic impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, degraded environmental also represent possibility for ecological restoration. According to the World Resources Institute, more than 2 billion hectares worldwide can be restored, mainly in tropical regions. Measures such as the complexity in vegetation structure, species diversity and ecosystem process are parameters to indicate the success of ecological restoration projects. Vertebrates, especially birds, have been suggested as key stone species in restoration projects, especially due to the provision of ecosystem service of seed dispersal and associated functions in the establishment of plant communities. In this dissertation we aimed to evaluate the effects of birds as a key species in areas under regeneration. To this aim, we conducted an integrative systematic review, which consisted in 1) the evaluation of published studies focusing on ecological restoration by birds and 2) a meta- analysis evaluating the effects of bird perches on several plant variables associated with communities in the process of ecological restoration. These studies were published over the last 25 years (1993-2020), with emphasis on the last decade (2010-2020), which comprised more than 60% of the published studies. The studies were conducted in 85 different countries and the United States led the number of articles involving birds and restoration, with about 39% of the studies published (n=104 studies). A strong and significant effect of the experimental addition of artificial perches for birds was observed as a technique for restoration of degraded areas, regardless of the origin of the damage and the variable of the plant community evaluated. Areas in which artificial perches were installed alone as a restoration technique showed an increase of more than 50% in plant variables, but the use of perches associated with other nucleation techniques, such as soil transposition, increased by almost 200% the success of plant communities in relation to the control areas. These results reinforce the key role of birds in ecological restoration processes and indicate that the use of artificial perches might increase the speed of the restoration, especially if associated with other nucleation techniques.