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Food Habits of Green Peafowl (Pavo Muticus) ABSTRACT

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Food Habits of Green Peafowl (Pavo Muticus) ABSTRACT Food habits of green peafowl (Pavo muticus) Tanwarat Pinthong1*and Wina Meckvichai2 ABSTRACT The study on food habits of Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus) was conducted in Huai Tab Saloa and Huai Song Tang water basin in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary,Thailand.A total of 50 peafowl droppings were analyzed to determine their dietary composition. Green Peafowl consumed a variety of animal and plants. The peafowl dropping was largely consisted of plant materials; 96.42%, while animal material amounted to 3.17%. Among five categories of plants, most common diet was grass seeds which constituted as much as 30.54% followed by dicotyledon plant and fruits respectively. Animals made up a second largest in Green Peafowl consumption. Isoptera were the largest matters ingested followed by Hymenoptera and Arachnida respectively. There was no evidence of consumption on vertebrate in this studied.Green Peafowl also swallow some gravel in order to improve their digestion system. This studied found that 31.54% of peafowl dropping consisted of many gravel, suggested that Green Peafowl also ingested non-food item e.g. gravel or sand between foraging. Key Words:. Pavo muticus, Green Peafowl, food habits, peafowl dropping *Corresponding Author; E-mail address: [email protected] 1Division of Science, Faculty of Education, Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University under the Royal Patronage, Pathumthani, 13180. 2Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330 INTRODUCTION Peafowls in the world basically refer to three galliforms; African Congo Peafowl (Afropavo congensis), Indian or Blue Peafowl (Pavo cristatus), and Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus). For Green Peafowl, the remaining populations are found in dry forests in Cambodia, Myanmar,the southern portion of Laos,and west-central Vietnam (Brickle et al., 2008). Outside of this region populations persist in Yunnan in China (Liu et al., 2009), Java,Indonesia (Balen et al., 1995) and on West and North of Thailand (Meckvichai et al., 2007). Knowledge on the ecology of Green Peafowl is somewhat limited and largely based on qualitative studies. Most records are found in a wide range of habitats including dry deciduous forest (Brickle, 2008, Bult and Vongkamjan, 2005; Liu et al., 2008; Pinthong, 2009), pastures or open forest (Balen et al., 1995). The majority of records are from the foothill to hill ridge (Meckvichai et al., 2004; Robson, 2008); riverside which characterized by shallow, present of sand bar and sandy bottomed with grassy banks (Pinthong, 2009; Ponsena, 1988). They may also be found areas dominated by bamboo (Rojanadilog et al., 1985; Pinthong, 2009), agricultural fields (cotton black bean and corn) (Meckvichai et al., 2004) plantations (teak, rubber) (Balen et al., 1995), and community forest (Pinthong, 2009). Very little is known on the diet food of Green Peafowl except for the evidences report by Ponsena (1988) who studied the biological characteristics and breeding behaviours of Green Peafowl in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, and Rojanadilog et al. (1985) who studied the distribution range and some behavioural characteristics of green peafowl in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary.Therefore, this research aimed to study the diet of Green Peafowlin Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary which assessed from fecal analysis. MATERIALS AND METHODS Study areas. This study was conducted in Huai Tab Saloa and Huai Song Tang water basin in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary,Thailand.Green peafowl droppings were monthly collected along two transect consist of10km transect roughly parallel to Huai Tab Saloa and 4km transect roughly parallel to Huai Song Tangwhich found within 2m distance from transect. Green peafowl’s fecal analysis All droppings were collected and dried in oven at 60°C for 24 hour. 50 samples were chosen randomly and analyzed to determine quantify dietary composition.The food items in peafowl drops were carefully divided manually into plant and animal elements first, then plant items were separated into 5categories; grass seed, dicotyledon, monocotyledon, fruits and unidentifiedin a Petri dish containing 75 per cent ethanol alcohol under a low power binocular microscope. The weight of each dropping was evaluatedtwo widely-used methods; dry weight and percentage of occurrence (Arshad et al, 2000).The data were pooled to examine the overall percentage of each food categories. Student t-test analysis was done to examine the difference of food categories. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A total of 50 peafowl droppings were analyzed to determine their dietary composition. Peafowl dropping generally includes non-food item, i.e., sand and gravel, this study found that was 31.54% of total peafowl dropping weight. After removing gravel or non-food item out, the peafowl food materials were identified. As food items went through peafowl gastrointestinal tract prior to defecation, this causes difficulty in identification of the fecal remains and, from this study, 15.36% by volume was left unidentified. Fecal examination revealed that the peafowl dropping was largely consisted of plant materials; 96.42%, while animal material amounted to 3.17% (Table 1). Among five categories of plants, most common diet was grass seeds which constituted as much as 30.54% followed by dicotyledon plant and fruits respectively. Animals made up a second largest in Green Peafowl consumption. Isoptera were the largest matters ingested followed by Hymenoptera and Arachnida respectively.There was no evidence of consumption on vertebrate in this studied (Table 2). Table 1 Comparison among dry weight of plant and animal matters. N Organic matters V P - value All plant matters (%) Animal matters (%) Peafowl droppings 50 96.42 (93.21 - 99.03) 3.17 (0.37 - 9.47) 485 <0.0001 Food habit of Galliforms, including other birds, is mostly studied by examining bird crop content, bird stomach and gizzard, which is relatively simpler than bird fecal analysis. Moreover, remains in bird feces are usually more difficult to indentify than remains in bird crop. However, such an endangered species, examining crop content is not applicable for green peafowl. Fecal analysis technique was hence applied for this study It is generally accepted that food habits digestible, e.g., bone, and, on the other hand, underestimate the easily digested items, e.g., burrystudied from analysis of animal dropping tends to overestimate proportion of items that poorly fruit (Arim and Naya, 2003). Another limitation of the method is known as very time-consumed technique (Agnelli and Mainis, 1992) and in this study, it roughly took 25hrs per one sample in laboratory (weight of each sample is averagely 6.23 g).However, this limitation for each study too depends on detail of interest and hence number of food types or species found in samples and it consequently highly constraint on number of sample that we can carry. Table 2 Dietary composition of Green Peafowl with their percentage of dry weight Food items % of occurrence Plant materials Seeds 30.54 Dicotyledon 24.04 Monocotyledon 9.37 Fruits 18.09 Unidentified 15.36 Animal materials Acarina 0.18 Arachnida 0.62 Chilopoda 0.27 Coleoptera 0.25 Hemiptera 0.31 Hymenoptera 0.57 Isoptera 1.18 Orthoptera 0.20 Like other birds, Green Peafowl also swallow some gravel in order to improve their digestion system. Some of those gravel are defecated and contained within bird droppings. We found that approximately 32% of peafowl dropping consisted of many gravel, suggested that Green Peafowl also ingested non-food item e.g. gravel or sand between foraging which confirmed by the previous study (Rodjanadilog et al., 1985). The Green Peafowl, from the results, can be classified as an omnivorous bird concordantly to the general previous study (Ponsena, 1988; Rodjanadilog et al., 1985 ). Invertebrates in order Isoptera (termites) was predominant order in green peafowl dropping and then followed by order Arachnida (spiders) and Hymenoptera (mostly ants). This result, at least, partially explained by their poor in flight ability. In addition, especially for ants and termites, they are social insects who living in colony which generally occur in high abundance, clump in distribution and they do not seem to fluctuated between seasons. The Green Peafowl may advantage from those traits might allow fed on them relatively easier than other invertebrates. Food is the source of nutrients and energy. The animal body is the field of numerous mechanical activities which are sustained by the energy derived from the food. The nutrient in food support growth and maintenance of body structure. The Insect are source of protein and plant food contained calcium level that essentially for egg production (Arshad et al, 2000). However, most of plant matter was unidentified species. From this result, I only recognized which part they ingested was predominant in grasses seed, freshly leaves, shoot, herbaceous stem and thorn. The results hence suggested that green peafowl can feed on any plant part that has soft tissue. CONCLUSION Green Peafowl were classified as an omnivorous bird that foraging on the ground. They consumed a variety of animal and plant materials for nutrients and energy. They search for food by pecking on the ground where insect living.Like animal material, plants which cover the floor such as grass or ripe fruits which dispersed by frugivorous or self falling were consumed by Green Peafowl. Normally, Green Peafowl have no teeth for crushing food. They ingest sand and gravel to help break up the food into small particle. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank all officers from Huai Kha Kaeng Wildlife Sanctuary and Wildlife Breeding Station who greatly assisted in field. We gratefully thank Mrs. Parinyanoot Klinratana from the Plants of Thailand Research Unit, Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University for useful advice and laboratorial plant identification REFERENCES Agnelli, P. and A. Mainis. 1992. The comparison between barn owl pellet and foxscat analysis in small mammal survey. Hystrix the Italian journal of mammalogy 4(2): 65-68. Arim, M.
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