Estratègies de conservació en boscos de teix al Montseny

Abstract

Nowadays the European yew (Taxus baccata) is considered to be a relict species in Europe. In fact, in Catalonia, it can be spotted only in some areas of the Pre - Pyrinees and Prelitoral mountains. For that reason, since 2013, several pioneer projects have emerged in order to protect and conserve its habitat. One of these projects has its bases at yew’s population at la Font del Vilar (range of Montseny), where we performed our study. Our study aimed to analyse the dynamics of yew sprouts. To do so, we decided to surround the adult individuals with fences in order to protect sprouts from their natural predators, herbivores. To determinate whether our intervention was successful, we analysed the absolute number of seedlings, their mortality and germination of six adult yews: three of them were protected with a fence whereas the reast stayed unprotected. Data was collected once every three month, and the study lasted from September 2017 until March 2019. Overall, we couldn’t find significant differences between the areas that were protected compared to the ones that were unprotected. However, in the comparative analysis between different seasons, we found a significant difference during autumn 2018. This interesting observation could be explain due to the fact that during that specific time of the year it rained a lot compared to the same period on 2017 (data provided by meteorological station of Viladrau). Thus, we performed a second study in which we exclude the initial hypothesis regarding the herbivores, and we focused on the comparison between year 2017 and 2018. This second study allowed us to conclude that there were significant differences between summer and autumn of the period analysed