The bird communities diversity and indicator groups of natural and anthropogenic landscapes of the South and South-east of Ukraine

In the paper the factors affecting on the α- and β-diversity of bird communities in the south and south-east of Ukraine were identified. Also indicator species for most typical habitats of the territory were identified. The relationship between indicators of bird communities diversity and area of habitats were found. The recording of the comminities of birds was held in the zonal, azonal, intrazonal, and anthropogenically transformed landscapes in the river of Danube, Dniester, Moloshnaya, Moloshniy lagoons, in artificial forests, agricultural landscapes, steppe, meadow, reed, saltmarsh habitats of the sea islands in the settlements of various type. The quantitative assessments of bird communities biodiversity were made using the logarithm of the number of species, Shannon-Wiener index, the Pielow index. The effect of the area and the type habitat on a diversity index variance was estimated using the General linear models (GLM) procedure. The estimation of the mean α-diversity of the bierd communities diversity was found to be equal of 11.0 species varying from 10.9 to 11.11. Evaluation of the γ-diversity gived a mean value of 174 species with varying scores from 170 to 177 species. Evaluation of β-diversity gived a mean value of 15.8 varying from 15.4 to 16.1. The richest in the number of birds is forests and reed belts. The smallest species richness was characterized for steppes, marshes and cliffs. Between Shannon index and Pielow index there was a positive correlation. The greatest evennes in the number of species of birds are characterized by step, shelterbelts and forests communities. The smal-lest evennes was characteristic for pits, islands and cliffs communities. The fractioning of β-diversity indicated that the type of habitat determines 37% of the variation of this indicator and the area of habitat variation determining β-diversity. The joint effect of habitat type and area determines 11% of the variation of β-diversity. The main source of variation β-diversity was the differentiation gradient “open habitats” (steppe or agriculture biotopes) – forest habitats (forests, artificial forest plantations). Indices of species diversity of birds communities was found to be depend on the area and habitat types. Also shown the dependence of species diversity of the area is specific for each type of habitat. In most cases, the number of species increased from natural habitat area. You can select habitats with high levels of species depending on the area. These included belts, woodlands, thickets of reeds. The group with the lack of statistically significant association between the number of species and habitat area, or even negative bond include anthropogenically transformed or dynamic natural habitats (alluvial sand spit islands and estuaries, agricultural, residential areas, cliffs, steppes, lakes). Species richness of these habitats was formed by the representatives of other habitat factors result in landscape diversity. With the increase in some areas monocoenosis (steppe, lake or island) the relative area of contact with neighboring habitats and ecotonic effect was reduced, resulting in species richness decreases with increasing their area. The indicators species grops were reveales due to realation between biotopes types and bird distribution.