The effects of changing vegetative composition on the abundance, species diversity and activity of birds at the Jornada Basin LTER site, 1997

This data package contains bird abundance data collected in plots
that have had various plant functional groups or species
experimentally removed at the Jornada Basin LTER site in southern
New Mexico, USA. This data was collected in an effort to distinguish
the differential effects of plant community biomass, plant community
functional groups, and biodiversity within functional groups on
plant community function, including effects on animals. To make
these distinctions, treatments were established by the selective
removal of plant species or functional groups within experimental
plots. There are eight treatments: control (C, no removals); four
functional group removal treatments (PG, perennial grass removed; S,
shrubs removed; SSh, subshrubs removed; Succ, succulents removed),
and three species richness manipulation treatments. Richness
manipulations included a simplified treatment (Simp), where only the
single most abundant species of each growth form is preserved and
all other species in the growth form are removed, a reduced‐Larrea
treatment (rL), where the Larrea is assumed to be the dominant and
is removed while minority components remain, and a reduced-Prosopsis
treatment (rP), where Prosopis rather than Larrea is removed as the
shrub dominant. Following treatments, bird abundance and habitat
preference data was collected in 1997. This data set consists of
plot number, treatment type, and time of bird presence by taxa and
by habitat and behavior. This study is complete.