Symposium number: 23

Title: NATURAL HOLES: THE MISSING DIMENSION IN UNDERSTANDING HOLE-NESTER ECOLOGY

Principal organizer: Tomasz Wesolowski
Department of Avian Ecology, Wroclaw University, Sienkiewicza 21, 50335 Wroclaw, Poland
email: tomwes@biol.uni.wroc.pl

Second organizer: Kathy Martin
Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2424 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada

First keynote speaker: Tomasz Wesolowski
Department of Avian Ecology, Wroclaw University, Sienkiewicza 21, 50335 Wroclaw, Poland
Title of first keynote paper: Lessons from long-term hole nester studies in a primeval temperate forest

Second Keynote speaker: Kathy Martin
Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2424 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada
Title of second keynote paper: Resource flow in secondary hole nester communities in old mixed forests

Contributed talks

Symposium description: Secondary hole nesters (SHN) are birds that are critically dependent on holes for nesting and roosting. The absence of holes renders habitat uninhabitable for them; and in man managed woods, their populations are known to increase with the provision of nest boxes, suggesting that SHNs are limited by shortage of holes and must compete for them.
This symposium will investigate this assumption, and the questions arising, with data collected in undisturbed (primeval) forests on different continents under totally different biological settings. Such a broad geographical coverage, involving different ecological/taxonomic systems, will allow comparisons of SHN communities of independent origin. The papers will present well-documented case studies from each continent, supplemented by information from other studies within their regions, to focus on the following questions: (1) does hole supply differ across forests under natural conditions on different continents? (2) what are the major hole making agents in the different systems? (3) how frequently do SHNs face a shortage of holes and what is the relative importance of nest site competition?, and (4) what is the relative importance of other factors in shaping hole nester populations and their community ecology?

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