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Bird Community Structure and Diversity in Peninsular Malaysia

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BIRD COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND DIVERSITY IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA NUR MUNIRA BINTI AZMAN UNIVERSITI SAINS MALAYSIA 2017 BIRD COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND DIVERSITY IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA by NUR MUNIRA BINTI AZMAN Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2017 DEDICATION My humble effort I dedicate To Loving parents and grandparents, whose Utmost efforts and prayers are always with me. To Respected teachers, whose Kind guidance and encouragement helped me to reach at this stage. To My husband and little son, whose Became my backbone throughout this journey. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Alhamdulillah, all praises to Allah s.w.t, for giving me the opportunity and strength to complete my fieldwork, analyses and thesis writing. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supportive supervisor, Professor Shahrul Anuar Mohd Sah and my dedicated co-supervisor, Dr. Amirrudin Ahmad who have provided guidance and ideas from commencement of this project. Their assistance and thoughts are much appreciated. Thank you to Dr. Nurul Salmi Abdul Latip for her continuous motivation in completion of this project. I would like to thank the Institute for Post-graduate Studies (IPS), Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the transportation provided by the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). I acknowledge the Ministry of Higher Education (KPT) for awarding MyBrain15 (MyPhd) scholarship to me. Sincere appreciation to my passionate teachers; Mr. Mohd Abdul Muin Md. Akil and Mr. Mohd Nasir Azizan who successfully trained me in bird identification. I am also indebted to my field assistants; Mr. Yusof Omar, Mr. Nordin Ahmad, Mr. Hafizul, Mr. Abdullah, and Mr. Muthu who made all field data collection possible. My deepest gratitude to my fellow friends, Dr. Nur Juliani Shafie, Nur Adibah Ishadi, Bidarulmunir Ahmad Anas, Norafifah Supardy, Nor Amira Abdul Rahman, Mahfuzah Othman, and Aini Hasanah for their ideas, time and advice. Thank you to my husband, Mr. Mohd Nasir Azizan, my son Ammar Mifhal Mohd Nasir, my family members; Mak Kelly, Nenek, Mak Yum, Ayah, Wa and Na for their continuous motivation and inspiration in completion of my study. To my late father, Azman Hashim and my late grandmother, Fatimah Hj Ali, thank you for their support and prayers. And last but not least, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me either directly or indirectly during my field work and thesis writing, whom I cannot mention one by one. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiv LIST OF SYMBOLS xvi ABSTRAK xvii ABSTRACT xix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Bird diversity in the tropics 1 1.2 Bird diversity in natural habitats of Peninsular Malaysia 3 1.3 The importance of birds 6 1.4 Contribution of rice fields on bird diversity in Peninsular Malaysia 9 1.5 Rationale 10 1.6 Thesis outline 13 1.7 Objectives 15 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 16 2.1 Birds in natural habitats 16 2.2 Estimating bird species richness 19 2.3 Beta diversity analysis 25 2.4 Patterns of rarity among birds 30 2.4.1 Rarity in birds 30 iii 2.4.2 Functional diversity measure 32 2.5 Birds in rice fields 33 CHAPTER 3: GENERAL MATERIALS AND METHODS 36 3.1 Review of method used 36 3.2 Study areas 39 3.3 Sample collection 41 3.3.1 Point count method 41 3.3.2 Capture technique 42 CHAPTER 4: SPECIES RICHNESS AND COMMUNITY 45 STRUCTURE OF BIRDS IN NATURAL HABITATS OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA 4.1 Introduction 45 4.2 Materials and methods 47 4.2.1 Data analysis 47 4.2.1(a) Species accumulation curve 47 4.2.1(b) Bird status 48 4.3 Results 51 4.3.1 Species accumulation curve 51 4.3.2 Bird species occurrence across study sites 53 4.4 Discussion 67 4.4.1 Species accumulation curve 67 4.4.2 Bird species occurrence across study sites 68 4.5 Conclusion 71 iv CHAPTER 5: BIRD SPECIES RICHNESS IN NATURAL 73 HABITATS OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA 5.1 Introduction 73 5.2 Materials and methods 76 5.2.1 Data analysis 76 5.2.1(a) Species richness estimator 76 5.2.1(b) Performance evaluation of estimators 77 5.2.1(c) Inventory completeness index 80 5.2.1(d) Adjusted estimate range 80 5.3 Results 81 5.3.1 Species accumulation curve and species estimations 81 5.3.2 Performance evaluation of estimators 85 5.4 Discussion 88 5.5 Conclusion 94 CHAPTER 6: BETA DIVERSITY OF BIRD COMMUNITIES IN 96 NATURAL HABITATS, PENINSULAR MALAYSIA 6.1 Introduction 96 6.2 Materials and methods 97 6.2.1 Study areas 98 6.2.2 Data analysis 100 6.3 Results 102 6.3.1 Beta diversity: Variation in community structure 102 6.3.2 Avifauna dissimilarity: Turnover in species assemblages 105 6.3.3 Taxonomic similarity between regions 108 6.4 Discussion 109 v 6.4.1 Beta diversity: Variation in community structure 110 6.4.2 Avifauna similarity: Turnover in species assemblages 115 6.4.3 Taxonomic similarity within region 117 6.5 Conclusion 119 CHAPTER 7: PATTERNS OF RARITY AMONG BIRDS IN 121 NATURAL HABITATS OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA 7.1 Introduction 121 7.1.1 Forms of rarity 121 7.1.2 Species classification into forms of rarity 123 7.1.3 Functional diversity for rare species 125 7.2 Materials and methods 125 7.2.1 Study areas 125 7.2.2 Data analysis 126 7.2.2(a) Forms of rarity 126 7.2.2(b) Functional diversity 127 7.3 Results 130 7.3.1 Patterns of rarity 130 7.3.2 Functional diversity of rare species 132 7.4 Discussion 136 7.4.1 Patterns of species rarity 136 7.4.2 Functional diversity of rare species 141 7.5 Conclusion 145 vi CHAPTER 8: THE CONTRIBUTION OF RICE FIELDS TO THE 147 BIRD DIVERSITY IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA 8.1 Introduction 147 8.2 Materials and methods 150 8.2.1 Study areas 151 8.2.2 Data analysis 156 8.2.2(a) Species composition 156 8.2.2(b) Species community structure 156 8.3 Results 158 8.3.1 Species accumulation curve and species composition across 158 rice fields 8.3.2 Bird status in rice fields 164 8.3.3 Comparison of species community structure in natural 166 habitats and rice fields 8.4 Discussion 174 8.4.1 Birds in rice fields 174 8.4.2 Contribution of rice fields to bird diversity 176 8.5 Conclusion 180 CHAPTER 9: GENERAL DISCUSSION 182 CHAPTER 10: GENERAL CONCLUSION 187 10.1 Conclusion 187 10.2 Future research 189 REFERENCES 191 APPENDICES LIST OF PUBLICATIONS AND PROCEEDINGS vii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1 Various ecological studies that used species richness estimator 22 over the last two decades. Table 3.1 List of differences between point count and mist-netting 38 methods (Herzoq et al., 2002; Derlindati & Caziani, 2005; Barlow et al., 2007a). Table 4.1 List of birds in presence/absence data for 53 sites of natural 54 habitats in Peninsular Malaysia. Table 4.2 List of common bird species with more than 25 occurrences in 65 natural habitats of Peninsular Malaysia. Table 5.1 Seven types of estimators that were used in this study 75 (Colwell & Coddington, 1994; Chazdon 1998; Colwell 2015). Table 5.2 Summary of species richness estimations for natural habitat in 82 Peninsular Malaysia. Hundred randomisations without replacement were chose by using EstimateS. The upper abundance limit for rare species was set at 10. Table 5.3 Performance of species observed and seven estimators for bird 86 species in natural habitat of Peninsular Malaysia based on bias and precision measures. The boldly printed estimators were the top three least biased and most precise estimators. A bias value near to zero indicates a least bias estimated while a value close to zero indicates high precision of the estimator. MMM was recorded as the least bias and most precise estimator. Table 6.1 List of sampling sites based on seven regions of Peninsular 99 Malaysia. Table 6.2 Beta diversity values (1-Jaccard’s similarity, upper diagonal) 104 and distance (lower diagonal) between 53 study sites. Table 6.3 Statistical summary for taxonomic similarity ( s ) and 109 Whittaker’s β-diversity applied to birds of the order Passeriformes (presence/absence) recorded from natural habitats within seven regions of Peninsular Malaysia. Table 7.1 Types of rarity (Longino et al., 2002). 122 Table 7.2 The seven forms of rarity proposed by Rabinowitz (1981) 124 with modifications according Gaston (1994). viii Table 7.3 Attributes of life history traits used for bird species (modified 128 from Barbaro & Halder, 2008). Table 7.4 Forms of rarity of birds in natural habitats in Peninsular 131 Malaysia based on categories developed by Rabinowitz et al. (1986). Rarity was assessed based on occurrence data of bird species since 1993-2014. The cells are comparable to classification as suggested by Rabinowitz et al. (1986) where ‘YES’ = ≥25 sites, ‘yES’ = 20-24 sites, ‘YEs’ = 15-19 sites, ‘yEs’ = 10-14 sites, ‘YeS’ = 5-9 sites, ‘yeS’ = 3-4 sites, ‘Yes’ = 2 sites and ‘yes’ = 1 site. Table 8.1 Study areas in rice fields of Peninsular Malaysia. The table 153 explained the details information on the study areas according state. Table 8.2 List of waterbird species recorded in rice fields of Peninsular 162 Malaysia. Table 8.3 List of least concern birds that have decreasing population 165 trend in rice fields of Peninsular Malaysia.
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