Abstract

AGUILERA-ORTEGA, Julio Eduardo. Ecological Effects of Wildfires on the Birdlife from a Forest in El Salvador. Huitzil [online]. 2021, vol.22, n.1, e607.  Epub Oct 10, 2022. ISSN 1870-7459.  https://doi.org/10.28947/hrmo.2021.22.1.490.

With the objective of evaluating the ecological effects caused by wildfire, on the birdlife of the dry deciduous forest in the Walter Thilo Deininger Park, El Salvador, I established four points counts in each study area, based on the time since the fire (Z1 = five years, Z2 = two years and Z3 = one year). The Hutcheson t-test determined that the recently affected areas maintained a significantly greater diversity of birds than the area with the longest time since fire (Z1-Z2 t= 5.198, gl=208, P < 0.01; Z1-Z3 t=5.499, gl=170, P < 0.01). The effective numbers of species reinforced this idea. The quantitative Sørensen index showed that the similarity between pairs of zones was low to moderate (Z1-Z2 31%; Z1-Z3 48%; Z2Z3 52%), which was consistent with the high diversity I found, because few species were shared between zones. With the correspondence analysis, I found a significant association between the trophic guilds studied and the characteristic plant stratum of each zone (x2 = 143.0521, P < 0.01). My results provide evidence that wildfires have favored the birdlife diversity of the park and also that the use of trophic guilds is useful in the comparative study of bird communities.

Keywords : Birdlife; birds; correspondence analysis; dry deciduous forest; forest fire; trophic guilds; wildfire.

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