Water Birds Diversity Variations in Tidal and Non-tidal Wetland Habitats in East Al_Hammar Marsh South of Iraq

Abstract

Waterbird diversity and its distribution are deemed as one of the essential issues in the ecological conservation of wetlands areas. However, the differences in the diversity of waterbirds in tidal and non-tidal wetlands have been underestimated. This study aimed to identify the variations in bird diversity between tidal and non-tidal areas in East Al-Hammar marsh to guide the efforts of bird and habitat conservation. The bird survey was extended from August 2020 to March 2021, in three selected sites; Slien (non-tidal area), Al-Sallal and Al-Burqa (tidal areas). Twenty-nine species were observed. These species were classified into three categories: migrant 68.96, resident 6.90% and migrants and residents 24.14%. Species richness indices included; number of species, Margalef and Menhienk indices indicated that the highest values were in the Slien site, there were 19, 3.191 and 1.254, respectively. Similarly, Shannon Weiner and Berlion’s indices showed the highest values in Slien. However, the Berker-Berker dominance index revealed the highest value in the Slien site 0.193. Interestingly, the Jaccard similarity index showed the highest measure of 0.791 between Al-Sallal and Al-Burqa, while the highest dissimilarity index of Whittaker was between Slien and Al-Sallal. In sum, the current data analysis demonstrated that non-tidal areas supported higher diversity of waterbirds than tidal marshes.