Abstract
Disturbances of natural origin comprise many categories of processes: for example, fires, floods, extreme meteorological and marine events, water stress and other perturbations associated with hydrological dynamics, grazing, and predatory activities by consumer organisms at higher trophic levels. Moreover, they include all those events which can be connected to intra/and interspecific relations (Sousa 1984).
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Notes
- 1.
Moreover, we refer you to the specific literature on natural disasters for the disturbances which damage human populations.
- 2.
As far as birds are concerned, there are many species on which fire exert positive effects because they are capable of colonizing newly burnt areas. For example, some species belonging to the order Piciformes which utilize necromass as trophic site, as well as ecotonal (edge) species (spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa striata, and other passerine birds of the family Sylvidae) and/or those species tied to the newly available resources (granivores, generalist omnivores; for Italy see also Ukmar et al. 2006). Since they can be easily sampled, birds are an extensively studied group of higher vertebrates.
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Battisti, C., Poeta, G., Fanelli, G. (2016). Categories of Natural Disturbances. In: An Introduction to Disturbance Ecology. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32476-0_7
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