Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:24:36.483Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Avifaunal feeding guilds’ response to landscape compositional heterogeneity and their drivers in forest mosaic, Uttarakhand, India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Tanveer Ahmed Open the ORCID record for Tanveer Ahmed [Opens in a new window]  and
Afifullah Khan
Tanveer Ahmed
Affiliation:
Department of Wildlife Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP202002, India
Afifullah Khan*
Affiliation:
Department of Wildlife Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP202002, India
*
Author for correspondence: Afifullah Khan, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The positive association between landscape compositional heterogeneity and avian species richness is widely accepted, however, birds of different feeding guilds are expected to respond differently because of diverse resource utilisation patterns and ecological tolerance. In the present study, we assessed the response of avian species and avifaunal feeding guilds to landscape compositional heterogeneity and factors associated with their richness. Bird richness and landscape variables, edge density, landscape diversity, and area of land cover types were evaluated at 30 sampling sites in the Terai-Arc landscape of Uttarakhand, India. Univariate regression was performed to investigate the response of birds and various feeding guilds to landscape compositional heterogeneity. Average weighted models of most parsimonious generalised linear regression models (<Δ 2AICc) were developed for various feeding guilds to identify significant predictors of species richness. The richness of overall birds and most feeding guilds, except piscivores and frugivores, responded positively to landscape compositional heterogeneity at variable spatial scales. The scale of effect was largest for carnivore (1.5 km), followed by granivore (1 km), insectivore (0.75 km), and frugi-insectivore, nectarivore, and omnivore (0.5 km). Overall bird species richness was positively associated with landscape diversity, teak plantation, and Sal-mixed forest. The average-weighted models identified edge density and dry riverine forest for frugi-insectivore, barren land and water body for the carnivore, teak plantation, Sal-mixed forest and dry-riverine forest for insectivore, edge density, human habitation/agriculture, teak plantation, barren land and scrubland for granivore, human habitation/agriculture for omnivore and waterbodies for piscivore and frugivore guilds as the significant drivers of species richness. The study concludes that the response to landscape compositional heterogeneity differs among feeding guilds and varies with the spatial scale of analysis. The results of our study are expected to serve as a reference for future studies, exploring the landscape relationship to the avian community in similar environmental conditions.

Keywords

BirdsGuildsHimalayan foothillsLandscape heterogeneityLandscape predictorsSpecies richnessTerai-Arc landscape
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , July 2022 , pp. 183 - 193
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, T, Bargali, HS and Khan, A (2019) Status and distribution of Avifauna in Ramnagar forest division, Western Terai-Arc Landscape, Uttarakhand. Indian Forester 145, 935–945.Google Scholar
Ahmed, T, Bargali, HS, Verma, N and Khan, A (2018) Status of wildlife habitats in Ramnagar Forest Division Terai- Arc Landscape Uttarakhand. Geoscience Research 3, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ali, S and Ripley, SD (1983) Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, DL (2001) Landscape heterogeneity and diurnal raptor diversity in Honduras, the role of indigenous shifting cultivation. Biotropica 33, 1–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arriaga-Weiss, SL, Calme, S and Kampichler, C (2008) Bird communities in rainforest fragments, Guild responses to habitat variables in Tabasco, Mexico. Biodiversity Conservation 17, 173–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barve, S (2009) Responses shown by bird communities to teak plantations in Sagar Forest Division, Karnataka. Masters Dissertation, University of Saurashtra. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276272672_Responses_shown_by_bird_communities_to_teak_plantations_and_surrounding_natural_forests_in_Sagar_Forest_Division_Karnataka_India Google Scholar
Benton, T, Vickery, J and Wilson, J (2003) Farmland biodiversity: is habitat heterogeneity the Key. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18, 182–188 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, A (1997) Diversity and abundance of birds in relation to forest fragmentation, habitat quality and heterogeneity. Bird Study 44, 355–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bideberi, G (2013) Diversity, distribution and abundance of avifauna in respect to habitat types, a case study of Kilakala and Bigwa, Morogoro, Tanzania. Masters Dissertation, Sokoine University of Agriculture. http://www.suaire.sua.ac.tz/bitstream/handle/123456789/517/GLORIA%20BIDEBERI.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Google Scholar
Bohning-Gaese, K (1997) Determinants of avian species richness at different spatial scales. Journal of Biogeography 24, 49–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonilla, EPD, León-Cortés, JL and Rangel-Salazar, JL (2012) Diversity of bird feeding guilds in relation to habitat heterogeneity and land-use cover in a human modified landscape in southern Mexico. Journal of Tropical Ecology 28, 369–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boscolo, D and Metzger, JP (2009) Is bird incidence in Atlantic forest fragments influenced by landscape patterns at multiple scales? Landscape Ecology 24, 907–918 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckland, ST (2006) Point-transect surveys for songbirds: robust methodologies. The Auk 123(2), 345–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, KP and Anderson, DR (2002) Model Selection and Multimodel Inference, A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach. New York: Springer,Google Scholar
Burnham, KP (2015) Multimodel inference, understanding aic relative variable importance values. https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/kenburnham/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2016/08/VARIMP.pdf Google Scholar
Carr, LW and Fahrig, L (2001) Effect of road traffic on two amphibian species of differing vagility. Conservation Biology 15, 1071–1078.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chettri, N, Deb, DC, Sharma, E and Jackson, R (2005) The Relationship between bird communities and habitat. Mountain Research and Development 25, 235–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cottingham, KL, Lennon, JT and Brown, BL (2005) Knowing when to draw the line: designing more informative ecological experiments. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3, 145–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, MA and Johnson, DH (2006) Proximate and landscape factors influences grassland bird distributions. Ecological Application 163, 1062–1075.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniels, RJR, Hegde, M and Gadgil, M (1990) Birds of the man-made ecosystems: the plantations. Proceedings of Indian Academy Science 9, 79–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, DE (1945) The annual cycle of plants, mosquitoes, birds, and mammals in 2 Brazilian forests. Ecological Monograph 15, 243–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeGraaf, RM and Yamasaki, M (2003) Option for managing early successional forest and shrubland bird habitats in the northeastern United State. Forest Ecology and Management 185, 179–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Develey, PF and Peres, CA (2000) Resource seasonality and the structure of mixed species bird flocks in a coastal Atlantic forest of southeastern Brazil. Journal of Tropical Ecology 16, 33–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diaz, M and Telleria, JL (1996) Granivorous birds in a stable and isolated open habitat within the Amazonian rainforest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 12, 419–425 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ding, Z, Liang, J, Hu, Y, Zhou, Z, Sun, H, Liu, L, Liu, H, Hu, H and Si, X (2019) Different responses of avian feeding guilds to spatial and environmental factors across an elevation gradient in the central Himalaya. Ecology and Evolution 9, 4116–4128 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunning, J, Danielson, B and Pulliam, H (1992) Ecological process that affect population in complex landscapes. Oikos 65, 169–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fahrig, L, Baudry, J, Brotons, L, Burel, FG, Crist, TO, Fuller, RJ, Sirami, C, Siriwardena, GM and Martin, JL (2011) Functional landscape heterogeneity and animal biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Ecology Letters 14, 101–112 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gestich, CC, Arroyo-Rodríguez, V, Ribeiro, MC, da Cunha, RGT and Setz, EZF (2018) Unraveling the scales of effect of landscape structure on primate species richness and density of titi monkeys (Callicebus nigrifrons). Ecological Research 34, 150–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gil-Tena, A, Torras, O and Suara, S (2008) Relationships between forest landscape structure and avian species richness in NE Spain. Ardeola 55, 27–40.Google Scholar
Graf, RF, Bollmann, K, Suter, W and Bugmann, H (2005) The importance of spatial scale in habitat models, Capercaillie in the Swiss Alps. Landscape Ecology 20, 703–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafson, EJ (1998) Quantifying landscape spatial pattern, what is the state of the art? Ecosystems 1, 143–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslem, A and Bennett, AF (2008) Birds in agricultural mosaics: the influence of landscape pattern and countryside heterogeneity. Ecological Application 18, 185–196.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Herrmann, HL, Babbitt, KJ, Baber, MJ and Congalton, RG (2005) Effect of landscape characteristics on amphibian distribution in a forest-dominated landscape. Biological Conservation 123, 139–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, JD, Fahrig, L, Cappuccino, M and Lindström, J (2005). Body size affects the spatial scale of habitat-beetle interaction. Oikos 110, 101–108 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horner-Devine, MC, Daily, GC, Ehrlich, PR and Boggs, CL (2003), Countryside Biogeography of Tropical Butterflies. Conservation Biology 17, 168–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hostetler, M and Holling, CS (2000) Detecting the scales at which birds respond to structure in urban landscapes. Urban Ecosystem 4, 25–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hovick, TJ, Elmore, RD, Fuhlendorf, SD, Engle, DM and Hamilton, RG (2015) Spatial heterogeneity increases diversity and stability in grassland bird communities. Ecological Applications 25, 662–672.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackson, HB and Fahrig, L (2014) Are ecologists conducting research at optimal scale? Global Ecology and Biogeography 24, 52–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, DG and Quintana-Ascencio, PF (2020) A solution to minimum sample size for regressions. PLoS ONE 15, e0229345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jhala, YV, Qureshi, Q and Gopal, R (2015) The Status of Tigers, Co Predators & Prey in India 2014 (Report no. TR 2015/021). National Tiger Conservation Authority. Dehradun: New Delhi and The Wildlife Institute of India.Google Scholar
Katayama, N, Amano, T, Naoe, S, Yamakita, T, Komatsu, I, Takagawa, S, Sato, N, Ueta, M and Miyashita, T (2014) Landscape heterogeneity–biodiversity relationship, effect of range size. PLoS ONE 9, e93359.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ke, A, Sibiya, MZ, Reynolds, C, McCleery, RA, Monadjem, A and Fletcher, RJ (2018) Landscape heterogeneity shapes taxonomic diversity of non-breeding birds across fragmented savanna landscapes. Biodiversity Conservation 27, 2681–2698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khan, A (2004) Elephant habitat interaction and its management implication in Rajaji National Park. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Wildlife Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/10603/65417 Google Scholar
Kushwaha, SPS and Roy, PS (2002) Geospatial technology for wildlife habitat evaluation. Tropical Ecology 43, 137–150.Google Scholar
Kushwaha, SPS, Munkhtuya, S and Roy, PS (2001) Mountain goat habitat evaluation in Rajaji National Park using Remote Sensing and GIS. Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing 28, 293–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, MB and Martin, JA (2017) Avian Species and Functional Diversity in Agricultural Landscapes: Does Landscape Heterogeneity Matter? PLoS ONE 12, e0170540.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, H and Reynolds, JF (1995) On the definition and quantification of heterogeneity. Oikos 73, 280–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lim, HC and Sodhi, NS (2004) Responses of avian guilds to urbanisation in a tropical city. Landscape and Urban Planning 66, 199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindemann, ES, Harris, JP and Keller, GS (2015) Effects of vegetation. landscape composition. and edge habitat on small mammal communities in Northern Massachusetts. Northeast Naturalist 22, 287–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macarthur, RH and Wilson, EO (1967) The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, J and Phillipps, K (1993) A Field Guide to The Birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali, The Greater Sunda Islands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mazerolle, MJ and Villiard, MA (1999) Patch characteristics and landscape context as predictor of species presence and abundance: a review. Ecoscience 6, 117–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCullagh, P and Nelder, JA (1989) Generalized Linear Models. London: Chapman and Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarigal, K and Marks, BJ (1995) FRAGSTATS, Spatial Pattern Analysis Program for Quantifying Landscape Structure. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-351. Portland: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarigal, K and McComb, WC (1995) Relationship between landscape structure and breeding birds in the Oregon Coast Range. Ecological Monographs 65, 235–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miguet, P, Jackson, HB, Jackson, ND, Martin, AE and Fahrig, L (2016) What determines the spatial extent of landscape effects on species. Landscape Ecology 31, 1177–1194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Møller, AP (2019) Parellel decline in the abundance of insect and insectivore birds in Denmark over 22 year. Ecology and Evolution 9, 6581–6587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondal, K, Sankar, K and Qureshi, Q (2012) Factors influencing the distribution of leopard in a semiarid landscape of Western India. ActaTheriologica 58, 179–187.Google Scholar
Moradi, HV, Zakaria, M and Robinson, SK (2013) Understory bird responses to the edge-interior gradient in an isolated tropical rainforest of Malaysia. The International Journal of Environmental Resources Research 1, 203–232.Google Scholar
Moradi, HV, Zakari, M and Rosli, Z (2009). Edge Responses of birds in an isolated lowland tropical rainforest in peninsular Malaysia. The Malaysian Forester 72, 87–107.Google Scholar
Morelli, F, Pruscini, F, Santolini, R, Perna, P, Benedetti, Y and Sisti, D (2013). Landscape heterogeneity metrics as indicators of bird diversity: determining the optimal spatial scales in different landscapes. Ecological Indicators 34, 372–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prajapati, RK, Triptathi, S and Mishra, RM (2014) Habitat modeling for Tiger (Panthera tigris) using geo-spatial Technology of Panna Tiger Reserve (M.P.) India. International Journal of Scientific Research in Environmental Sciences 2, 269–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, JS, Marks, DR., Howe, RW, Hanowski, JM and Niemi, GJ (2004) The importance of scale for conservation and assessment of anuran populations in coastal wetlands of the western Great Lakes, USA. Landscape Ecology 20, 441–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team (2018) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org/ Google Scholar
Ries, L and Sisk, TD (2010) What is an edge species? The implication of sensitivity to habitat edges. Oikos 119, 1636–1642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ries, L, Fletcher, RJ, Battin, J and Sisk, TD (2004) Ecological responses to habitat edges, mechanisms, models, and variability explained. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systemetics 35, 491–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, DL, Cooper, RJ and Petit, LJ (2000) Use of premontane moist forest and shade coffe agroecosystems by army ants in western Panama. Conservation Biology 14, 192–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, SK (1994) Habitat selection and foraging ecology of raptors in Amazonian Peru. Biotropica 26, 443–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenzweig, ML (1995) Species Diversity in Space and Time. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rostro-Garcia, S, Tharchen, L, Abade, L, Astaras, C, Cushman, SA and Macdonald, DW (2016) Scale dependence of felid predation risk, Identifying predictors of livestock kills by tiger and leopard in Bhutan. Landscape Ecology 31, 1277–1298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweiger, AH, Irl, SDH, Steinbauer, MJ, Dengler, J and Beierkuhnlein, C (2016) Optimizing sampling approaches along ecological gradients. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 7, 463–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sekercioglu, CH, Ehrlich, PR, Daily, GC, Aygen, D, Goehring, D and Sandı´, RF (2002) Disappearance of insectivorous birds from tropical forest fragments. Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences 99, 263–267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sohil, A and Sharma, N (2020) Assessing the bird guild patterns in heterogeneous land use types around Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Ecological Processes 9, 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steckel, J, Westphal, C, Peters, MK, Bellach, M, Rothenwoehrer, C, Erasmi, S, Scherber, C, Tscharntke, T and Steffan-Dewenter, I (2014) Landscape composition and configuration differently affect trap-nesting bees. wasp and their antagonists. Biological Conservation 172, 56–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terborgh, J (1977) Bird species diversity on an Andean elevational gradient. Ecology 58, 1007–1019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thiollay, JM (1990) Comparative diversity of temperate and tropical forest bird communities – the influence of habitat heterogeneity. Acta Oecologia 11, 887–911.Google Scholar
Thornton, DH and Fletcher, RJ (2014) Body size and spatial scales in avian response to landscapes a meta-analysis. Ecography 37, 454–463.Google Scholar
Valerio, F, Basile, M, Balestrieri, R, Posillicoc, M, Di Donatoc, S, Altea, T, Matteuccif, G (2016) The reliability of a composite biodiversity indicator in predicting bird species richness at different spatial scales. Ecological Indicator 71, 627–635 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vendermeer, JH (1972) Niche theory. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systemetics 3, 107–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villard, M, Trzcinski, MK and Merriam, G (1999) Fragmentation effects on forest breeding birds: relative influence of woodland cover and configuration on landscape occupancy. Conservation Biology 13, 774–783.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westphal, MI, Field, SA, Tyre, AJ, Paton, D and Possingham, HP (2003) Effects of landscape pattern on bird species distribution in the Mt. Lofty Ranges, South Australia. Landscape Ecology 18, 413–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittingham, MJ, Stephens, PA, Bradbury, RB and Freckleton, RP (2006) Why do we still use stepwise modelling in ecology and behaviour? Journal of Animal Ecology 75, 1182–1189.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xie, S, Lu, F, Cao, L, Zhou, W and Ouyang, Z (2016) Multi-scale factors influencing the characteristics of avian communities in urban parks across Beijing during the breeding season. Scientific Reports 6, 29350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Ahmed and Khan supplementary material

Ahmed and Khan supplementary material

Download Ahmed and Khan supplementary material(File)
File 1.7 MB