Although waterfowl have been well studied generally, less work has been done
on their community ecology. This paper addresses that topic using 25 years of
counts of breeding ducks at a prairie-wetland site near Woodworth, North Dakota.
Counts of 11 species at the site were related to the number of wetland basins
containing water, an index of conserved soil moisture, temperature and precipitation
measurements in April and May, an index of continental population sizes, and
the counts at the census site during the previous year. All explanatory variables
were related to the count of one or more waterfowl species, but the number of
ponds and the continental population size were significant for more of the species
than were the other variables.
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