Native Shade Trees Aid Bird Conservation in Tea Plantations in Southern India

Raman, T. R. Shankar; Gonsalves, Chayant; Jeganathan, Panchapakesan; Mudappa, Divya

doi:10.18520/cs/v121/i2/294-305

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…For example, windbreaks, which are often thin slivers of natural vegetation present in tea plantations in our study area, have been shown to possess similar bird species richness compared to adjacent primary forests (Sreekar et al 2013). In a similar vein, data from the Anamalai hills suggests that native shade trees within tea plantations bolster avian species richness almost two‐fold compared to tea plantations without native shade trees (Raman et al 2021). Furthermore, the type of human‐modified land cover type matters too, and coffee, rubber and areca plantations across the Western Ghats have been shown to support more bird species than tea plantations (Sidhu et al 2010, Karanth et al 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Using citizen science to parse climatic and land cover influences on bird occupancy in a tropical biodiversity hotspot

et al. 2022

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Disentangling associations between species occupancy and its environmental drivers –– climate and land cover –– along tropical mountains is imperative to predict species distributional changes in the future. Previous studies have primarily focused on identifying such associations in temperate mountain systems. Using 1.29 million robustly processed citizen science observations contributed to eBird between 2013 and 2021, we examined the role of climatic and landscape variables and its association with bird species occurrence within a tropical biodiversity hotspot, the southern Western Ghats in India. Using an occupancy modeling framework, we found that temperature seasonality, precipitation seasonality, and the proportion of evergreen forests were significantly associated with species‐specific probabilities of occupancy for 78% (n=43 birds), 38% (n=21 birds), and 27% (n=15 birds) of bird species examined, respectively. Our study shows that several forest birds (n=18 species) were negatively associated with temperature seasonality, highlighting narrow thermal niches for such species. The probability of occupancy of six forest species and eight generalist species was positively associated with precipitation seasonality, indicating potential associations between rainfall and resource availability, and thereby, species occurrence. A smaller number of largely generalist species (n=9 birds) were positively associated with human‐modified land cover types –– including the proportion of agriculture/settlements and plantations. Our study shows that rigorously filtered citizen science observations can be used to identify associations between environmental drivers and species occupancy on tropical mountains. Though current distributions of tropical montane birds of the Western Ghats are strongly associated with climatic factors (mainly, temperature seasonality), naturally occurring land cover types (forests) are critical to sustaining montane avifauna across human‐modified landscapes in the long run.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Using citizen science to parse climatic and land cover influences on bird occupancy in a tropical biodiversity hotspot

et al. 2022

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“…Human practices are known to exert direct and long -term effects on local plant diversities which often have global consequences (58). As an example, P. juliflora -once introduced in India for specific ecological services, is currently detrimental to native flora and fauna (59). P juliflora is adept to propagate in a variety of habitats including Shannon diversity indices of nine sites farmland associated RV patches and shows high dispersal through local inhabitants and livestock (60).…”

Section: D E Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remnant vegetation in farmland - its significance in ethnobotany and local ecosystem

Dastidar¹,

Basu²,

Venkatraman³

et al. 2022

Plant Sci. Today

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This paper evaluated the structure of remnant vegetation (RV) in and around the farmlands of Kancheepuram District, Tamil Nadu of Southern India, to understand its significance in the local ecosystem. Stratified quadrats along nine randomly selected transects were used for sampling vegetation. The study recorded 2495 specimens of 96 plant species under 43 families in 1848 quadrats (88 of 10 m × 10 m, 352 of 5 m × 5 m and 1408 of 1 m × 1 m dimensions) while there was a possibility of recording more species with better sampling efforts. To know the ethnobotanical uses of plants, interviews were conducted with local villagers and people belonging to the Irula tribe, and later the data were collated with published information. Sixty -six plant species were recorded with traditional uses in food, fodder, fuel, condiment and medicine. Prosopis juliflora, an alien invasive species, was a serious threat to the native flora since higher P. juliflora abundance was associated with declining diversity of other plants. The study found that the absence of monitoring and management protocols leading to uncontrolled propagation of invasive species could cause potential damage to the region’s dry evergreen forests, which were often located near the farmlands.

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“…Perennial herbs are more attractive to ND birds than annual and biennial herbs because they provide greater shelter with higher height and leaf density ( Lask et al, 2020 ), increasing their sense of security. Moreover, the vegetation composed of perennial plants is more natural and stable and has denser growth than annual plants, providing birds with sustainable food and shelter sources ( Raman et al, 2021 ). Compared with UD birds, ND birds are less adaptable to anthropogenic disturbances.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of tea plantations in the maintenance of bird diversity in Anji County, China

Zhao

et al. 2023

PeerJ

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Background Tea plantations support regional sustainable development and have the potential to support more biodiversity than urban open spaces. Numerous studies have shown the value of low-intensity agroecosystems for preserving biodiversity, however tea plantations have received less attention. The relationship between tea plantations and the diversity of macro-organisms, such as birds, is still not fully understood. Methods We investigated the bird diversity and vegetation conditions and calculated landscape metrics in 30 tea plantations in Anji County, Zhejiang Province, China. At these 30 sampling sites, we recorded 262 individuals belonging to 37 species, which were classified into two guilds: nature- and urban-dependent birds. We used cluster analysis to group the sampling sites based on the abundance of the birds. Then we evaluated the effects of associated plant diversity in tea plantations and the surrounding landscape composition on these bird guilds using species association computation and a generalized linear model. Results The results show that the maintenance of bird diversity by tea plantations benefits both nature- and urban-dependent birds. We found that landscape-scale factors surrounding the tea plantations mainly affected the bird richness due to their habitat selection. Landscape agglomeration and habitat quality were the dominant landscape-scale metrics. Patch-scale factors of tea plantations, especially the vegetation structure, had a strong influence on the abundance of the birds. Nature-dependent birds preferred to occur in tea plantations with perennial herbs, while urban-dependent birds were attracted by the general distributed plants, as annual herbs. Therefore, we concluded that tea plantations play an important role as a transitional zone between natural habitats and urban areas, thus reducing the impact of urbanization and maintaining bird diversity in low-quality habitats.

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Native Shade Trees Aid Bird Conservation in Tea Plantations in Southern India

Cited by 13 publications

References 1 publication

Using citizen science to parse climatic and land cover influences on bird occupancy in a tropical biodiversity hotspot

Using citizen science to parse climatic and land cover influences on bird occupancy in a tropical biodiversity hotspot

Remnant vegetation in farmland - its significance in ethnobotany and local ecosystem

Role of tea plantations in the maintenance of bird diversity in Anji County, China

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