Open AccessAvifaunal Assemblage along Rural-Urban Gradients in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India
Author(s) -
Arif Siddiqui,
Tanveer Ahmed,
Afifullah Khan
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
notulae scientia biologicae
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2067-3264
pISSN - 2067-3205
DOI - 10.15835/nsb11410487
Subject(s) - species richness , urbanization , geography , guild , ecology , insectivore , species diversity , omnivore , urban ecology , disturbance (geology) , socioeconomics , biology , habitat , predation , paleontology , sociology
Studies assessing the effect of urbanization on bird community structure largely carried out in developed countries and little is known about the developing region particularly in India. Bird diversity, richness, composition and guild structure was examined at urban, semi-urban, semi-rural and rural-natural sites in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Each site was sampled using 90 fixed radius point counts between January and June 2016. Semi-urban site was more species rich (2.38 ± 0.06), diverse (0.80 ± .01) and even (0.90 ± .00) than other three urban-rural gradient sites. Density of bird peaked at urban site (43.09 ± 4.7). Numerically, urban site was dominated by omnivore species which was replaced by insectivorous species at semi-natural, semi-rural and rural-natural sites. The current information corroborates the earlier studies assessing impact of urbanization of birds and Conell’s intermediate disturbance hypothesis of higher richness and diversity at intermediate disturbance.