TY - JOUR
T1 - Seasonal variation and crop diversity shape the composition of bird communities in agricultural landscapes in Nepal
AU - Katuwal, Hem Bahadur
AU - Rai, Jeevan
AU - Tomlinson, Kyle
AU - Rimal, Bhagawat
AU - Sharma, Hari Prasad
AU - Baral, Hem Sagar
AU - Hughes, Alice C.
AU - Quan, Rui Chang
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the CAS-SEABRI ( Y4ZK111B01 ) program. HBK was supported by a CAS-TWAS President’s Fellowship. We thank the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal, for providing permission to carry out this work in lowland Nepal. We would also like to thank Yam Mahato, Anish Timsina for field assistance, Roshan Thakur, Subash Singh, Pradip Timalsina, Arjun Shrestha, Suraj Baral, Hathan Chaudhary, Sandhya Sharma, Bishnu Maharjan, K.S. Gopi Sundar, Lin Wang and Mingxia Zhang for their help, cooperation, sharing knowledge and information on the species. We would like to thank Christos Mammides and Akihiro Nakamura for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. Also, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the CAS-SEABRI (Y4ZK111B01) program. HBK was supported by a CAS-TWAS President's Fellowship. We thank the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal, for providing permission to carry out this work in lowland Nepal. We would also like to thank Yam Mahato, Anish Timsina for field assistance, Roshan Thakur, Subash Singh, Pradip Timalsina, Arjun Shrestha, Suraj Baral, Hathan Chaudhary, Sandhya Sharma, Bishnu Maharjan, K.S. Gopi Sundar, Lin Wang and Mingxia Zhang for their help, cooperation, sharing knowledge and information on the species. We would like to thank Christos Mammides and Akihiro Nakamura for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. Also, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/8/1
Y1 - 2022/8/1
N2 - Farmland birds are declining globally due to anthropogenic activities, with particularly few studies in Asian agricultural landscapes. Various studies have examined the impacts of landscape heterogeneity on farmland bird composition, but few have considered seasonal changes in bird diversity and examined functional feeding guild assemblages. Here, we disentangle the impact of seasonal variation (summer, monsoon, and winter), cropping practice (mixed crop, monocultural-crop, and fallow land), crop type (rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane, and other crops), landscape heterogeneity, and the number of houses and trees on the richness and abundance of farmland birds and their feeding guilds conducted within human-dominated agricultural landscapes of lowland Nepal. We established 116 transects (farmland = 100, forest = 8, and river = 8), and each transect was visited nine times from April 2018 to December 2019, with forests and river transect to test the dissimilarities in bird composition between those habitats and farmlands. We recorded 201 bird species in farmland, 133 in the forest, and 131 in river habitats. Bird composition on farmlands showed more dissimilarity with forest than river transects. We recorded nine globally, and 26 nationally threatened birds in farmlands. Seasonal variation and cropping practice significantly influenced the richness of all farmland birds and resident birds only, whereas species abundances vary by season only. We recorded higher species richness in the winter season and mixed crop fields but greater abundance in the monsoon and monoculture crop fields. Farmland bird richness increased with increasing tree numbers but decreased with increasing house numbers. Sugarcane fields had the highest bird richness within crop species, whereas rice fields had the greatest abundance. Seasons and cropping practice also shaped the assemblages of feeding guilds differently. In the context of increasing crop intensification globally, our study suggests that the governments in this region should encourage farmers to cultivate mixed crops and simultaneously restrict the urbanization of farmlands to protect bird diversity. Seasonality should be factored into analyses aimed at understanding bird diversity in agricultural landscapes.
AB - Farmland birds are declining globally due to anthropogenic activities, with particularly few studies in Asian agricultural landscapes. Various studies have examined the impacts of landscape heterogeneity on farmland bird composition, but few have considered seasonal changes in bird diversity and examined functional feeding guild assemblages. Here, we disentangle the impact of seasonal variation (summer, monsoon, and winter), cropping practice (mixed crop, monocultural-crop, and fallow land), crop type (rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane, and other crops), landscape heterogeneity, and the number of houses and trees on the richness and abundance of farmland birds and their feeding guilds conducted within human-dominated agricultural landscapes of lowland Nepal. We established 116 transects (farmland = 100, forest = 8, and river = 8), and each transect was visited nine times from April 2018 to December 2019, with forests and river transect to test the dissimilarities in bird composition between those habitats and farmlands. We recorded 201 bird species in farmland, 133 in the forest, and 131 in river habitats. Bird composition on farmlands showed more dissimilarity with forest than river transects. We recorded nine globally, and 26 nationally threatened birds in farmlands. Seasonal variation and cropping practice significantly influenced the richness of all farmland birds and resident birds only, whereas species abundances vary by season only. We recorded higher species richness in the winter season and mixed crop fields but greater abundance in the monsoon and monoculture crop fields. Farmland bird richness increased with increasing tree numbers but decreased with increasing house numbers. Sugarcane fields had the highest bird richness within crop species, whereas rice fields had the greatest abundance. Seasons and cropping practice also shaped the assemblages of feeding guilds differently. In the context of increasing crop intensification globally, our study suggests that the governments in this region should encourage farmers to cultivate mixed crops and simultaneously restrict the urbanization of farmlands to protect bird diversity. Seasonality should be factored into analyses aimed at understanding bird diversity in agricultural landscapes.
KW - Agricultural land
KW - Avian conservation
KW - Avian diversity
KW - Farmland birds
KW - Feeding guild
KW - Grassland bird
KW - Mixed crop
KW - South Asia
KW - Sugarcane field
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127215509&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85127215509&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.agee.2022.107973
DO - 10.1016/j.agee.2022.107973
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85127215509
VL - 333
JO - Agro-Ecosystems
JF - Agro-Ecosystems
SN - 0167-8809
M1 - 107973
ER -