Insectivores and foliage foraging species contributed to increasing overall species number, while ground foraging species negatively affected to the overall avian diversity of a community.
In contrast, bird abundance was strongly associated with hardwood cover at local and landscape scales, especially for foliage-gleaning species.
Also lurking among the foliage are 420 species of orchid, and scarlet poison dart frogs in purple stockings.
Large relative investment in foliage of invasive species compared to co-occurring natives was commonly observed [ 15, 18, 52, 53].
The concentration of vacuolar OPC and PPC fraction within foliage of both species was similar, whereas the cell walls of beech leaves contained 1.4 times more PPC than those of spruce.
Finally, a decrease in fertilization gain because of ACS reactions in foliage of both species (hypothesis 3), stronger in beech, can partly explain the lower responsiveness of beech versus spruce to an elevated CO2 supply.
The PC of the cell walls, as indicated by increased LMA and observed microscopically, formed important carbon sinks in foliage of both species for supplementary assimilates in response to elevated carbon availability.
Furthermore, the overall activity of foliage-gleaning bat species (number of passes per minute) was higher in the Hainich-Dün than on the Schwäbische Alb (Kirsten Jung, unpublished data).
A large-scale monitoring study in both regions in the vicinity of the study oaks showed higher numbers of foliage-gleaning bat species in the Hainich-Dün (seven species) compared with the Schwäbische Alb (four species).
However, because of the lower numbers of foliage-gleaning bat species (≈ 7 10 species) in central Europe compared with that of insectivorous birds (≈ 70 80 species), we assume that birds contribute more to herbivore control than do bats, although this awaits further investigation.
