Response Of Bird Communities To Different Human Disturbances During Summer In Yaoluoping

The biotic community refers to the collection of all biological species in a certain space,including various plants,animals,and microorganisms.They use the resources in the space together and form an integrative system through interactions.Bird community is a collection composed of populations of various bird species in a certain space.It is an important part of biodiversity and plays an important ecosystem function.However,with the continuous deepening of human influence on natural landscapes and ecosystems,biodiversity has been destroyed as never.Because they are at a high trophic level and are very sensitive to environmental changes,birds are one of the most significant groups affected by environmental changes.Understanding how birds interact with the environment at the community level and studying the response patterns of bird communities to environmental changes caused by human activities can provide scientific basis for bird management and protection.Yaoluoping National Nature Reserve is a typical forest ecosystem,which contains extremely diverse forest ecosystems in the northern subtropical mountains of the Dabie Mountains.Due to historical reasons and local social and economic development,there are many natural villages,provincial roads,county roads,and village-to-village roads inside the reserve.These human disturbances may have significant impacts on the local natural ecosystem.However,because there is no relevant research,the impact of these roads and villages on the bird communities in the reserve is still unknown.Researchers conducted summer forest bird surveys in different altitude areas of the Yaoluoping Nature Reserve from July to August 2017,and analyzed the impacts of different types of roads and villages on the species composition and diversity of the summer bird communities.The main findings are as follows:(1)A total of 78 species of 4,225 birds were recorded,belonging to 11 orders and31 families,among which passerine birds were the most,with 55 species of 4009,accounting for 70.5% of the total number of species and 97.9% of the total number of individuals.Among the recorded species,there were 54 resident species,accounting for 69.2% of the total number of species,16 summer migratory species,accounting for 20.5%,6 winter migratory species,accounting for 7.7%,and 2 migratory species,accounting for 2.6%.Three species are listed as Vulnerable Species in the IUCN Red List,and seven species are listed as national II-level key protected wild animals.(2)The number of bird species,the number of individuals,and the Shannon-Wiener species diversity index were affected by habitat type and altitude.Among the habitat types with different disturbance intensity,the number of bird species,individuals and species diversity index in villages were significantly higher than those of other habitats.The number of bird species and individuals in low-altitude areas was significantly higher than that in high-altitude areas.There was no significant difference in the Pielou evenness index between different types of habitats,but the evenness index in low-altitude areas was significantly higher than that in high-altitude areas.(3)No matter at high altitude or low altitude areas,there were significant differences in species composition among bird communities in the four types of habitats: villages,village-to-village roads,highways and forests.In the high-altitude areas,there were significant difference in the species composition of bird communities between villages and village-to-village roads,while in the low-altitude areas,the bird composition in these two habitats had strong similarities.There was no difference in the species composition between highways and forests in either high-altitude or low-altitude areas,or the bird compositions of these two habitats were significantly different from those of the other two habitats.The above findings show that the number of species and diversity index in low-altitude areas in the Yaoluoping Nature Reserve were higher than those in high-altitude areas.The number of individual birds,species number and diversity indices in the villages were higher than those in village-to-village roads,highways and forests.It could be attributed to the relatively open habitat and abundant food resources in villages.The forest vegetation canopy density was high,and the number of bird species,the number of individuals and the diversity index were low.The number of species in the village-to-village road habitat was significantly higher than that of the highway habitat,and because the type of disturbance was like that of the villages,the bird composition of the village-to-village road habitat is like that of the villages.In summary,we have concluded that moderate human disturbance is conducive to increasing the diversity of bird species in the forest landscape,but because there are more human disturbances in these areas,appropriate measures need to be taken to strengthen the protection of birds in this type of habitats.