On the relationship between bird and woody plant species diversity in the Uttara Kannada district of south India

Daniels, Ranjit RJ and Joshi, NV and Gadgil, Madhav (1992) On the relationship between bird and woody plant species diversity in the Uttara Kannada district of south India. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 89 (12). pp. 5311-5315.

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Abstract

Bird species richness is inversely related to woody plant species diversity and vertical stratification in the natural vegetation of Uttara Kannada, the district with the largest contiguous tract of humid tropical forest in peninsular India. This inverse relationship may be explained by the fact that although the peninsular Indian evergreen forests are rich in woody plant species when compared with the drier vegetation, they harbor an impoverished bird fauna due to their smaller overall extent and greater isolation. Much of this impoverishment is accounted for by the absence of many species of understory timaliids characteristic of the humid evergreen forests of the Eastern Himalayas and Southeast Asia. The plantations of Uttara Kannada largely derive their bird fauna from the drier vegetation and exhibit the commoner trend of a positive correlation between bird species richness and vertical stratification of the vegetation.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher:	The National Academy of Sciences, USA
Additional Information:	The copyright belongs to National Academy of Sciences.
Keywords:	Biodiversity;Tropical forest
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	03 May 2006
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:26
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/6555

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