Guwahati: A recent study by researchers has highlighted the importance of the last fragment of the tropical lowland forest in Assam because of the interaction between fruit and plant-eating birds.
Published on June 26 at the Biotropica Journal, this is one of the first studies of tropical Asian about the impact of forest fragmentation in plants and birds frugging.
This research was conducted between January and April 2019 by a team of scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (Wii, Dehradun) and the Natural Conservation Foundation (NCF, Bangalore).
“On the scale of a shrinking forest, it is very important to know how ecological interactions such as those between plants and birds spread seeds are changed due to fragmentation,” said Abir Jain, the lead author of the study.
“This study saw differences in factories and bird community frugging in the adjacent forest and forest fragments.
We found that fragments must be a variety of interactions,” he added.
They found that small fruit eaters such as Bulbuls and Barbet ‘Fed on the highest number of fruit’ in fragmented and adjacent forests.
They are very important in spreading seeds in these two types of forests.
They also found that the remaining remaining forests were very important for birds such as white chocolate hornbills spread, which spread more seeds than other birds.
The researchers quoted these examples to show that such a forest segment helped connect with a larger forest area and thus helped in the flow of biodiversity in it.
They called for legal protection from such a forest patch.
The authors collected data by observing bird feeding activities in the forest and documenting the diversity of fruit species they eat.
Sampling was carried out in two forest fragments that experienced degradation pressure —- Doom Dooma Reserve Forest, Kakojan Reserve Forest and the adjacent forest patch were less disturbed, better, Patkai Dehing National Park.
The three are above Assam.
The author documents 238 interactions between 63 fruit plants and 44 species of bird frugging on all sites.
Forest fragments have a higher prevalence of species related to open habitat and fewer large-flagship plant species depend on large birds for seed dispersions.
Habitat degradation and related gaps in the tree canopy in forest fragments can promote rapid bush growth and climbers.
Interestingly, certain pieces of species climbers and fig trees found important resources for Frugivora, especially in fragments.
“Various species and individual figs at different times this year functions as a vital food source throughout the year, including the slim season.
This underlines the importance of fig fruits and the need to save them,” explained the authors of Dr.
Navendu, a plant ecology of the Wii.
The findings of this study highlighted the conservation values ​​of the remains of rainforest rainlands in the Northeast Indian lowland and various interactions of plant seedlings they helped.
“The remaining fragments can act as ‘stepping stones’ to preserve regional biodiversity and facilitate connectivity between adjacent fragments and forests for wide species to move across the fragmented landscape,” he said.