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STUDIES OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FAUNA OF GRAZED AND UNGRAZED GRASSLAND IN TIREE, ARGYLL
Author(s) -
BOYD J. MORTON
Publication year - 1960
Publication title -
proceedings of the zoological society of london
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.915
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1469-7998
pISSN - 0370-2774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7998.1960.tb05829.x
Subject(s) - grassland , fauna , geography , ecology , environmental science , biology
The Reef machair on the south side of the airfield in Tiree, Argyll is a highly uniform type of grassland which has never been tilled. The airfield was built in the locality during the 1939‐45 war and the perimeter fence constitutes an ecological discontinuity of at least twelve years' standing, between grazed and ungrazed grassland. The differences in the soil fauna on either side of the fence are demonstrated by two similar batteries of pit‐fall traps over a period of twelve months. The catches of the traps consist mainly of arthropods. Over eighty species of invertebrate were identified and some of these were used for quantitative analysis. The numerical differences between catches on grazed and ungrazed plots are great, and the taxonomic groups are classified into those which are favoured by grazed and ungrazed conditions. The abundance peaks of the two plots are compared. Most of the groups have a single peak in autumn, a few in early summer and a few in both early summer and autumn. Numbers caught at times of climatic extreme are discussed. This habitat of highly uniform appearance is found to be heterogeneous and the reasons for this are given. Fencing is an important technique in forestry and wildlife management in Britain. The finer consequences are unknown, and this paper demonstrates what these are likely to be in a simple situation in uniform natural grassland in Tiree.