Prey selection by nesting House Martins Delichon urbica Linné, 1758 (Aves: Hirundinidae) in Algiers suburbs (Algeria)

Abstract

The diet of the House Martin Delichon urbica was analyzed in a suburban area in Pins maritimes, northeast of Algiers (Algeria). The diet was determined by analyzing 120 faecal samples collected from a breeding colony between April and September 2007. Insects were the most numerous prey types (99.86%). Hymenopterans were the dominant preys (56.99%), followed by Coleopterans (20.14%), Homopterans (14.22%), Heteropterans (5.45%), and Dipterans (3.10%). Division of the prey items into families demonstrated that the highest relative frequency was large Hymenopterans in the family Formicidae (54.0%). The dominant species in the diet was Tetramorium biskrensis, which comprised 32.6% of the diet. It was followed by Camponotus barbaricus (6.9%) and Monomorium salomonis (5.6%). Comparison between diet and availability of preys using the Savage index showed that T. biskrensis, Crematogaster scutelaris, Pheidole pallidula, Diptera sp. unident. and Aphidae sp. unident. were positively selected by D. urbica.

Impact of routine Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) treatment on the availability of flying insects as prey for aerial feeding predators

“…Using these methods, it is not possible to conduct parallel samples at a particular time of the day. In some studies, insects were captured in sweep nets (Poulin, 2012; Merzouki et al , 2014), a method that makes the aerial insect abundance difficult to quantify, includes insects roused or attracted by the collector, and covers only small areas. Emergence traps are inappropriate to investigate food availability for aerial feeding predators, as they only capture insects hatching in their respective habitat.…”

“…We found no other study investigating the nestling diet of aerial feeding birds in which the methods allowed such a direct comparison with aerial insect abundance as in the present study. Usually, either the nestling diet was investigated indirectly using faecal samples (Bryant, 1973; Merzouki et al , 2014), which combine prey fed during a period of time, or aerial insect abundance was studied with suction traps (Bryant & Turner, 1982), which combine insects available over a period of time. Using these methods, it is not possible to conduct parallel samples at a particular time of the day.…”

“…For the identification of preferred and avoided prey of D. urbicum , Savage's index was used as described in Merzouki et al (2014): W i = A i / D i , where A i = relative abundance in the nestling diet (i.e. in the food bales), D i = relative availability in the environment (i.e.…”

“…Previous investigation of the diet of aerial feeding birds in other parts of the world has shown diverse dominant taxa. D. urbicum favoured Hymenoptera in Algeria (Merzouki et al , 2014) and Diptera and Hymenoptera in France (Poulin et al , 2010). It was shown in England that relevant taxa in the diet of D. urbicum changed with the season (Bryant, 1973).…”