Cover Use and Predator-Related Mortality in Song and Savannah Sparrows

Abstract

Winter sparrow assemblages represent ideal systems for the investigation of mechanisms that act to structure terrestrial communities. Early investigations of these assemblages centered on the availability of food as a primary structuring mechanism Groups of sympatric sparrows that differed in their abilities to exploit seeds of varying sizes were thought to partition available seeds by size. These investigations led to the construction of idealized intake-maximization models that, along with the distribution of available seeds, were used to predict species' abundances and their patterns of coexistence