A Comparison of Bird Communities in Burned and Salvage-Logged, Clearcut, and Forested Florida Sand Pine Scrub

-We hypothesized that similar bird assemblages will occur in like-structured habitat that results from both clearcutting and high-intensity wildfire followed by salvage logging. To test this, we compared bird communities of sand pine scrub in mature forest and three disturbance treatments (1) high-intensity wildfire, salvage logged, and naturally regenerated, (2) clearcut, roller chopped, and broadcast seeded, and (3) clearcut and brackeseeded. We analyzed communities based on residency status and nesting guilds. Migratory breeding birds were nearly restricted to mature forest. Bird communities of mature forest were significantly more species rich and diverse than those of disturbance treatments in spring. However, species richness and diversity of migratory winter residents did not differ among treatments, indicating that they are habitat-structure generalists on their wintering grounds. Canopyand cavity-nesters and canopyand bark-foraging species were virtually restricted to mature forest. Most species recorded in mature sand pine forest or disturbance treatments were either habitat-structure generalists or also occurred in other similarly structured vegetation types. However, the threatened and endemic Florida Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma c. coerulescens) occurred only in disturbance treatments (no differences). Silvicultural disturbance appears to mimic the natural high-intensity disturbance regime by creating habitat structural features required by open scrub species and may be an important habitat management tool where the use of wildfire is impractical. However, long-term effects, unsalvaged burns, and landscape patterns created by clearcutting were not addressed and may also be important in structuring bird communities of sand pine scrub. Received 5 Jan. 1994, accepted 22 Aug. 1994. The influence of vertical and horizontal vegetation structure on bird communities is well known (MacArthur and MacArthur 1961, Cody 1968, James and Wamer 1982, Brown 1992). Natural disturbance plays a critical role in structuring habitat (Mushinsky and Gibson 1991). The impact of natural disturbance varies among ecosystems (Bormann and Likens 1979) in conjunction with the intensity, frequency, type, and size of the disturbance (Miller 1982). Sand pine (Pinus clausa) scrub is a sclerophyllous, shrub-dominated ecosystem occurring on xeric, infertile sand (Kalisz and Stone 1984) in Florida and extreme southern Alabama. The shrub layer is dominated by ' USDA Forest Service Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, P.O. Box 14524, Gainesville, Florida 32611. ' Univ. of Florida, Dept. of Wildlife and Range Sciences, P.O. Box 110430, 118 Newins-Ziegler Hall, Gainesville, Florida 32611. 3 USDA Forest Service Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, 700 S. Knoles Drive, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001.