Estimating and comparing food availability for tree‐seed predators in typical pulsed‐resource systems: Alpine conifer forests

Abstract

Alpine conifers produce pulsed resources for the community of tree‐seed consumers. Here, we describe field and statistical methods to estimate spatio‐temporal variation in seed‐crops in forests with different species composition. Annual and between‐site variation in seed production was high and characterised by occurrence of mast‐crops followed by seed‐crop failure the following year. Seed‐crops of different species did not fluctuate in parallel.

Abbreviations: DLSM, differences of least square means; CED, Cedrasco; OGA, Oga; VAL, Valfurva; BOR, Bormio; RHE, Rhemes; COG, Cogne

Keywords:

• Alpine conifers
• cone production
• forest composition
• seed‐energy content
• seed‐nutrient composition
• seed productivity

Acknowledgements

We thank Massimiliano Zaninetti and Giuseppe Airoldi for their help with the fieldwork. This study is part of the ASPER (Alpine Squirrel Population Ecology Research) project, funded by the province of Sondrio (Servizio Agricoltura, Caccia e Pesca, Settore Risorse Ambientali), the Gran Paradiso National Park, the Stelvio National Park and the Parco Regionale delle Orobie Valtellinesi to Istituto Oikos NGO, Milan. Additional financial support was given by MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università della Ricerca, project COFIN 2003, number 2003053710‐006) to Insubria University of Varese. This is paper #12 of the ASPER project.