Comparison of grass height during the three summers of survey at Ingula (2006/07, 2007/08 and 2010/11).

<p>Year is treated as a fixed effect and transect as a random effect. <b>Bold</b> vertical lines represent the estimated means according to the best model (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0162609#pone.0162609.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>).</p

Comparison of influence of fire on grass cover along transects that were burned and those that were not burned at Ingula using summer data for three years (2006/7, 2007/08 and 2010/11).

<p>Year is a treated as a fixed effect and transect as a random effect. <b>Bold</b> vertical lines show the estimated means according to the best model (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0162609#pone.0162609.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>).</p

Comparison of total bird species richness (combining birds that prefer heavy grazing with birds that prefer light grazing) at Ingula using data from summer surveys only.

<p>Year is treated as a fixed effect and transect as a random effect. <b>Bold</b> bars represent the estimated means.</p

avibaseline_PLOS

Grassland bird data and vegetation data file

Ingula vegtn transects 2006,2007,2010_PLOS2016

Ingula vegtn transects 2006,2007,2010_PLOS201

Comparison of Ingula bird species richness of all birds seen within 150m across the four seasons using transect data collected between 2006/07 to 2010/11.

<p>The data come from three summers, two autumns, two winters and one spring survey and only half the total number of transects were surveyed during summer 2010/11. Vertical lines show the estimated means obtained from a generalized linear mixed effects model that treated season as a fixed effect and transect as a random effect.</p

Response of birds species richness to grass height, cover and presence of dead grass along transect during the three summer surveys (2006/07, 2007/08 & 2010/11) at Ingula.

<p>The lines show the best fitting linear relationships (from Models ‘Cover’, ‘Height’ and ‘Dead’ in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0162609#pone.0162609.t003" target="_blank">Table 3</a>.</p

Comparisons of grass cover at Ingula over the three years of surveying.

<p>Year is treated as fixed effect and transect as a random effect. The vertical black solid line represents the mean according to the best model (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0162609#pone.0162609.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>) and the histograms show the distribution of the raw data. The data consisted of the count out of nine squares in each sampling grid that fell on grass.</p

Model selection analysis relating species richness of birds that prefer moderate grazing to habitat; constant model (Null), Fire (2 levels), Grazing (3 levels), Fire + Grazing, Grass cover, grass height, Dead grass and Grass cover + Grass height.

<p>The models were generalised linear mixed models assuming a Poisson response and log link function. Transect was treated as a random effect in all models. K is the number of parameters in a model, Delta AIC is the differences in AICs.</p

Model selection analysis relating total bird species richness in summer to transect habitat; constant model (Null), Fire (2 levels), Grazing (3 levels), Fire + Grazing, Grass cover, Grass height, Dead grass and Grass cover + Grass height.

<p>The models were generalised linear mixed models assuming a Poisson response and log link function. Transect was treated as a random effect in all models. K is the number of parameters in a model, Delta AIC is the differences in AICs.</p