Poster Details
CHARACTERIZING LOUISIANA WATERTHRUSH HABITAT IN AN AGRICULTURALLY DOMINATED LANDSCAPE
The Louisiana Waterthrush (Parulidae: Parkesia motacilla), a Neotropical migrant songbird, breeds in the eastern United States to southern Canada, occupying breeding territories along streams where adults feed themselves and nestlings both terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates. It has been proposed as a bioindicator because of its requirement for high-quality stream and forested riparian habitat to persist and successfully reproduce. Within the agriculture-dominated Western Pennyroyal Karst Plain (USEPA Ecoregion 71e) of northern Tennessee and southcentral Kentucky, the waterthrush is met by sparse streams (much water flows underground through karstic bedrock) with reduced riparian zones, and macroinvertebrate communities subject to agricultural pollution. This study aims to investigate correlations between features of stream and riparian habitat as measured by Tennessee’s standard protocols for macroinvertebrate surveys to waterthrush occupancy in Western Pennyroyal Karst Plain streams experiencing various degrees of habitat degradation. Forested buffer width was also analyzed. Streams where waterthrush presence was visually or aurally determined were compared to those where presence was not confirmed. While results are pending, we predict that waterthrush presence will be positively associated with relatively high macroinvertebrate taxa richness and largely unimpacted habitat conditions.
Steven W. Hamilton (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Austin Peay State University, hamiltonsw@apsu.edu;
Nicole Santoyo (Primary Presenter/Author), Austin Peay State University, nsantoyo@my.apsu.edu;