Abstract
A guild is a group of species that have similar requirements of resource and foraging behavior. The knowledge of insectivorous guild could explain foraging patterns, niche exploitation, and competition in a tropical forest. This information could help to monitor the forest by understanding the guild composition and their response to the habitat condition. In order to describe the guild composition and niche overlap of insectivorous birds, we observed all of the individual birds found foraging in the evergreen forest, Baluran National Park. Bray-Curtis similarity index and Pianka niche overlap index were used to analyze the data and grouping the birds into a guild. The cluster analysis consists of 27 bird species revealed 4 guilds: ground gleaner, foliage gleaner, aerial sallier, and bark prober. Based on species richness, foliage gleaner dominates the other groups while bark prober had the least species richness in the evergreen forest. The scarcities of feeding substrate affect guild existence and proved that the diversity of habitat substrate could affect the diversity of guild in an area. Ten congeneric species were found in this habitat and most of them are grouped into foliage gleaner. The junglefowl has the highest niche overlap than any other congeneric species. It seemed that the more specific the foraging substrate niche, the higher the competition among sympatric species. The level of congeneric/sympatric species competition could become the indicator to monitor a specific habitat or forest by understanding their niche partitioning, especially if the species is protected by the law.
Highlights
In bird community, and later on in other taxa as well, the classification based on niche is not sufficient to explain the utilization of resources and competition (Root, 1967, Simberloff & Dayan, 1991)
The percentage of data were used for further analysis to examine the guild grouping pattern of insectivorous birds in the evergreen forest
Birds can be divided into guild categories as follows: (1) foliage gleaner - bird species mainly foraging on foliage of trees or shrub layers using mainly the gleaning behavior; (2) ground gleaner - bird species that glean prey from the ground; (3) bark prober - bird species that probe or peck on tree trunks and thick branches to catch the prey, mainly using vertical foraging movement; (4) aerial sallier - bird species which usually fly catch prey in the air or various substrates
Summary
Later on in other taxa as well, the classification based on niche (e.g. the major food sources such as insectivores, frugivores, granivores, piscivores, nectarivores) is not sufficient to explain the utilization of resources and competition (Root, 1967, Simberloff & Dayan, 1991). The concept of the guild was originally created by Root (1967) to explain about “a group of individual birds that exploit the same class of environmental resources in a similar way”. The knowledge of guilds can explain the relationship between bird community and the habitat (Verner, 1984; Sekercioglu, 2012), as it can answer many questions such as the abundance of bird species, foraging patterns and preferences, or even the niche exploitation and competition (Adamik et al, 2003; Gray et al, 2007; Tscharntke et al, 2008; Mansor & Sah, 2012). The higher the membership number of a guild, the higher the level of competition amongst members (Huston, 1979)
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