Wild boars are considered as key elements of forest ecosystems by having direct or indirect effects on the environment through tillage, zoochory, or trampling, for example. These impacts can be observed in bird communities. This problem is well known in agricultural environments but what about forest bird species?
This question is the subject of a Master 2 internship (Amanda Cocquelet, University of Saint Etienne) which began on 27 February under the supervision of Frédéric Archaux and Anders Mårell for the COSTAUD project. Part of the internship was performed on OPTMix plots. The protocol consisted in placing artificial nests containing quail eggs in the fenced and unfenced plots. Some of these nests were accompanied by a photographic trap to know the identity of the predators and to estimate a frequentation of each plot by the different species present in the Orléans forest. At the same time, point counts were set up to define the bird communities on the OPTMix plots. Herbaceous and shrub cover were recorded to characterize the structure of the vegetation and the percentage of soil returned was recorded as an indicator of the presence of wild boars.
The aim of this study is to determine whether the presence of wild boar can directly influence forest bird communities by predation of nests, or indirectly by effects on vegetation cover.
