The spatio-temporal influences of habitat heterogeneity on the community structure of avian feeding guilds in human-dominated landscapes of the East African miombo woodlands

Abstract

Habitat heterogeneity plays a vital ecological role in influencing community ecology dynamics. We evaluated the relationship between habitat heterogeneity and land-use cover with avian community structure in the human-dominated landscape of the Katavi-Rukwa ecosystem in Tanzania. We used the fixed-radius point count method to record birds in different habitats. We calculated the relative abundances and the Shannon-Wiener diversity index of bird guilds across habitats as well as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and estimated land-use cover of the study area from Landsat 8 images. We grouped birds into five major guilds: Insectivore, Granivore, Omnivore, Carnivore and Nectarivore. Among the guilds, Insectivores, Omnivores, Nectarivores and Carnivores were positively correlated with an increase in NDVI, while Granivores were negatively correlated with an increase in NDVI. Among the habitats, woodland had high species diversity whereas riverine had low species diversity. Our findings highlight the importance of habitat heterogeneity in biodiversity conservation in human-dominated landscapes, and we suggest implementing conservation in these landscapes.