Bird assemblages on a Mediterranean sandy beach: a yearly study.

Around the 2007 yearly cycle, we carried out a transect in a Mediterranean sandy beach (central Italy), a structurally oversimplified ecosystem, elaborating the data in six bimonthly periods and in three longitudinal habitat types. We observed 25 bird species. Assemblages appear heterogeneous at taxonomic-, phenological- and ecological- level. Also normalizing (Margalef index), in winter the beach hosted the richest assemblage, in summer-autumn the lowest. The inner dunal area appears the richest habitat type. Here, the presence of vegetation presumably permits the occurrence of a large availability of different trophic resources for different species. Beaches represent patchy ecosystems with a different availability of resources in space and time that host heterogeneous bird assemblages, different in their ecology and phenology around a yearly cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]