Abstract
Worldwide understorey nesting bird species such as bulbuls can also be highly vulnerable to nest predation in disturbed landscapes because they breed mainly on the lower stage of the forest. We test the following hypotheses: the transformation of forests into alternative land use systems and the vegetation’s variables at the nesting sites will affect the understorey nest predation rates. The nests of 12 understorey bird species were surveyed and vegetation variables were measured within five types of habitats along a gradient of increasing forest destruction in the north-eastern peripheral zone of the Korup National Park in Cameroon. Only the open-cup nest type suffers from predation, mostly egg predation. The general linear mixed model analysis suggests that the types of habitat do not affect nest daily predation rate which decreases with increasing trees and understorey plant density. The most deleterious impact of deforestation in this study area is the reduction of nesting sites whose characteristics remain unchanged across the landscape. These results underscore the need to give understorey nesting species, as well as other particularly sensitive groups, special consideration within conservation strategies such as the reduced-impact logging techniques. Key words: Cameroon, deforestation, land-use system, nest predation, understorey birds.
Highlights
Tropical forests have been destroying in at an alarming rate (Sodhi et al, 2004)
The purpose of our research is to examine the effects of types of habitats on understorey avian nest predation within an Afrotropical understorey bird community
The 56 open-cup nests surveyed belong to 11 different species and did not differ significantly along the gradient of increasing forest destruction (Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 8.5195, df = 4, p = 0.074) they seemed to be highest in the secondary forest
Summary
The mechanisms of how forest modification affects the biodiversity destruction of African tropical rainforest regions are less well known (Norris et al, 2010; Newmark and Stanley, 2011; Newbold et al, 2015). These regions with high wildlife species richness and abundance have severe extinction rates because of habitat loss and overexploitation (Bradshaw et al, 2009; Cordeiro et al, 2015). Tonleu et al 193 extinctions of some forest birds resulting from direct or indirect consequences of deforestation have been recorded from various tropical regions (Castelletta et al, 2000; Sodhi et al, 2004). Some evidence in tropical forests showed that off-ground nests are generally less predated than ground nests (Pangau-Adam et al, 2006; Bobo, 2007)
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