Impacts of trees species and functional traits on birds visitation in a Nigerian montane forest: Implications for conservation

Scientific African

Ridwan Muhammad Jaafar¹  Toma Buba² 

[1] Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, P.M. B 0248, Bauchi, Nigeria;Corresponding author.;

关键词: Conservation;    Birds;    Montane;    Nigerian;    Traits;    Trees;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Birds provide ecosystem services that play crucial role in maintaining forest ecosystems. However, the knowledge of the relationship between different bird assemblages and different forest types is still scanty. We analyzed the impacts of different tree species of different functional traits on visitation preferences by birds in Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve, Nigeria (7°30′N, 11°30′E). We monitored visitation of different bird species to trees using the point-count method. A total of 32 bird species were recorded. Must of bird species (28 species) were insectivores, while four species are frugivores. The rate of visitation of different bird species differs significantly among the different tree species. Correlation analyses showed that the frequency of birds’ visits depend on abundance of individuals of a tree species. However, some of the tree species are more frequently visited by different species of birds, while other trees are peculiar in terms of visitation preferences by some of the bird species. More important tree species as the frequency of birds’ visitation is concern include M. lanceolata (205), P. fulva (134), and B. speciosa (113). Trees that were visited by the highest number of species of birds include B. speciosa (28), M. lanceolata (20), and T. aurentalis (19). There was also a positive effect of trees' functional traits on the total number of birds’ visits, but there was no correlation between the trees' functional traits with the abundance of individual bird species visitation. We hypothesized that small morphological differences among trees will have no impact on bird's visitation as found in this study. These results and interpretations have implications for sustainable management and conservation of montane forest and possibly elsewhere.

【 授权许可】

Unknown