Bird community assemblage under various urbanization types in district Vehari, South Punjab, Pakistan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63147/krjs.v5i2.253Keywords:
Avian Diversity, Urbanization, Specie richness, Biodiversity, Ecology, Bird guild, Mailsi District VehariAbstract
Vehari is a densely populated district in Punjab, Pakistan. A study was carried out to evaluate bird diversity in four land-use categories including urban with vegetation (UWV, Site 1), urban without vegetation (UWOV, Site 2), rural with less vegetation (RWLV, Site 3), and rural with more vegetation (RWMV, Site 4) during a period of one year. In total, 34 species and 33,452 individuals of birds were documented from the study sites. Species richness and diversity were found to be highest in Site 3 (RWLV/Fadda Town; S = 34; individuals = 11,918; Shannon H = 2.094; Simpson 1-D = 0.7251) and lowest in Site 4 (RWMV/Basti Hassan Abad; S = 20; individuals = 5,354; H = 1.832; Simpson 1-D = 0.7131). In terms of alpha diversity, Site 1 (UWV) recorded S = 23, H = 1.863 while Site 2 (UWOV) harbored S = 25, H = 1.921. The PCA ordination revealed a strong gradient of avian community composition along the habitat/urbanization axis explaining 98.72% of the total variations (PC1 = 95.812%; PC2 = 2.9154%). The current investigation suggests that the relationship between bird diversity and vegetation coverage might not be linear. It appears that the structure of the landscape, its closeness to canals, and to a certain extent, the local habitat use, are important regulators of the bird community structure in an urbanized habitat. Therefore, conservation strategies need to focus on habitat configuration and not only on the amount of vegetation cover, including the maintenance and restoration of small and isolated vegetation patches in urbanized areas.
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