Bird diversity of the Amrutganga Valley, Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, India with an emphasis on the elevational distribution of species

Dixit, Soham; Joshi, Viral; Barve, Sahas

doi:10.15560/12.2.1874

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Birds in the Himalayas exhibit two distinct phenologies of elevational distribution. Elevational migrants occur at low elevation for most of the year (eight to nine months), but move to higher elevations (2000 -4000 m or even higher) during the three-to four-month summer to breed [18]. These two elevational movement strategies are widely known in birds and have been hypothesized to arise due to limits on cold tolerance in winter [19], food availability [20] and predation [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-history characteristics influence physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia in Himalayan birds

et al. 2016

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Hypobaric hypoxia at high elevation represents an important physiological stressor for montane organisms, but optimal physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia may vary among species with different life histories. Montane birds exhibit a range of migration patterns; elevational migrants breed at high elevations but winter at low elevations or migrate further south, while high-elevation residents inhabit the same elevation throughout the year. Optimal physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia might therefore differ between species that exhibit these two migratory patterns, because they differ in the amount time spent at high elevation. We examined physiological parameters associated with blood-oxygen transport (haemoglobin concentration and haematocrit, i.e. the proportion of red blood cells in blood) in nine species of elevational migrants and six species of high-elevation residents that were sampled along a 2200 m (1000-3200 m) elevational gradient. Haemoglobin concentration increased with elevation within species regardless of migratory strategy, but it was only significantly correlated with haematocrit in elevational migrants. Surprisingly, haemoglobin concentration was not correlated with haematocrit in high-elevation residents, and these species exhibited higher mean cellular haemoglobin concentration than elevational migrants. Thus, alternative physiological strategies to regulate haemoglobin concentration and blood O carrying capacity appear to differ among birds with different annual elevational movement patterns.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-history characteristics influence physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia in Himalayan birds

et al. 2016

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“…Some investigators have suggested a link between snow at higher elevation and altitudinal migration to lower elevations, but no one has actually tested this hypothesis (King and Wales , O'Neil and Parker , Tomback , Hendricks and Swenson , Dixit et al. ). The general assumption is that snow represents a challenge for birds, with the results of some studies suggesting the inability to recover seeds stored in the ground as the specific mechanism (King and Wales , Tomback , Hendricks and Swenson ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altitudinal migration by birds: a review of the literature and a comprehensive list of species

2017

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Altitudinal migration is the seasonal altitudinal movement of birds from breeding areas to non‐breeding or wintering areas at different elevations. Although this type of migration is widely reported, questions remain concerning the number of species that perform altitudinal migration, possible variation among different taxa and geographic locations in the extent of altitudinal migration, and the foraging guilds of altitudinal migrants. We conducted an extensive bibliographic survey and compiled a list of altitudinal migrant birds worldwide. We characterized species in terms of their foraging guilds because the spatial distribution of food resources along altitudinal gradients is often evoked as a driver of bird altitudinal migration. We identified 1238 species of altitudinal migrants, ~10% of the ~10,000 extant species of birds. We found a strong geographic bias in publications focusing on avian altitudinal migration toward the United States and Costa Rica, and a paucity of studies in megadiverse regions such as the Afrotropical and Indomalayan realms, and areas in the Neotropics other than Costa Rica. We also found that most species of altitudinal migrants were invertivores rather than frugivores or nectarivores. This general pattern held true for all zoogeographic realms except the Neotropics, where nectarivores and frugivores predominated among altitudinal migrants. The prevalence of invertivore birds among altitudinal migrants is not unexpected because this is the most common foraging guild among birds worldwide. Overall, we found no prevalence of any specific foraging guild among altitudinal migrants across zoogeographic regions. The results of studies to date suggest that altitudinal migration by birds may be driven by a number of factors, including access to increased food resources for breeding or molting, weather conditions, and mating and nesting opportunities. However, to better understand the mechanisms underlying altitudinal migration, broadening the geographic scope of studies is paramount, with additional study of altitudinal migration especially needed in the megadiverse tropical regions of sub‐Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America.

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“…1 a Phylogenetic relationships among bird species used in the analysis following [ 46 ]. Elevational distributions are from Dixit et al [ 31 ] and Rasmussen and Anderton [ 41 ]. Dotted vertical lines represent sampling locations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We classified each sampled species as either an elevational migrant (EM status = 1) where almost all individuals migrate to significantly lower elevations or as sedentary (EM status = 0) were species that are consistently found in their breeding range in the winter in our study site. Information on elevational movement and distribution was obtained from a field survey [ 31 ] in our study site and Rasmussen and Anderton [ 41 ]. The first analysis consisted of generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs, function glmer in lme4; Bates et al [ 42 ]) to assess whether individual infection status with Plasmodium , Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon was influenced by elevation, bird migration strategy and season, as fixed effects, and bird taxonomy (species nested in genus and genus nested in family) as a random effect.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do avian blood parasites influence hypoxia physiology in a high elevation environment?

Ishtiaq

Barve

2018

BMC Ecol

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BackgroundMontane birds which engage in elevational movements have evolved to cope with fluctuations in environmental hypoxia, through changes in physiological parameters associated with blood oxygen-carrying capacity such as haemoglobin concentration (Hb) and haematocrit (Hct). In particular, elevational migrants which winter at low elevations, encounter varying intensities of avian haemosporidian parasites as they traverse heterogeneous environments. Whilst high intensity parasite infections lead to anaemia, one can expect that the ability to cope with haemosporidian infections should be a key trait for elevational migrants that must be balanced against reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood in response to high elevation. In this study, we explored the links between environmental hypoxia, migration, and disease ecology by examining natural variation in infections status and intensity of avian haemoporidians across a suite of Himalayan birds with different migratory strategies while controlling for host phylogeny.ResultsWe found predictably large variation in haemoglobin levels across the elevational gradient and this pattern was strongly influenced by season and whether birds are elevational migrants. The overall malaria infection intensity declined with elevation whereas Hb and Hct decreased with increase in parasite intensity, suggesting an important role of malaria parasites on hypoxia stressed birds in high elevation environments.ConclusionsOur results provide a key insight into how physiological measures and sub-clinical infections might affect dynamics of high-elevation bird populations. We suggest a potential impact of avian elevational migration on disease dynamics and exposure to high intensity infections with disease spread in the face of climate change, which will exacerbate hypoxic stress and negative effects of chronic avian malaria infection on survival and reproductive success in wild birds. Future work on chronic parasite infections must consider parasite intensity, rather than relying on infection status alone.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12898-018-0171-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Bird diversity of the Amrutganga Valley, Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, India with an emphasis on the elevational distribution of species

Cited by 12 publications

References 14 publications

Life-history characteristics influence physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia in Himalayan birds

Life-history characteristics influence physiological strategies to cope with hypoxia in Himalayan birds

Altitudinal migration by birds: a review of the literature and a comprehensive list of species

Do avian blood parasites influence hypoxia physiology in a high elevation environment?

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