Wheeldon, A, Mossman, HL, Sullivan, MJP orcid.org/0000-0002-5955-0483 et al. (2 more authors) (2019) Comparison of acoustic and traditional point count methods to assess bird diversity and composition in the Aberdare National Park, Kenya. African Journal of Ecology, 57 (2). pp. 168-176. ISSN 0141-6707
Abstract
Afromontane forests, like those in the Aberdare National Park (ANP) in Kenya, sustain unique avifaunal assemblages. There is a growing need for biodiversity inventories for Afromontane forests, especially through the utilisation of unskilled observers. Acoustic surveys are a potential aid to this, but more comparisons of this technique with that of traditional point counts are needed. We conducted a systematic survey of the ANP avifauna, assessing whether acoustic and traditional surveys resulted in different species richness scores, and whether this varied with habitat and species characteristics. We also investigated the role of habitat and elevation in driving variation in species richness. The ANP provides habitat types including scrub, moorland, montane, hagenia and bamboo forests. Overall, the surveys yielded 101 identified species. The acoustic method resulted in higher species richness scores compared to the traditional method across all habitats, and the relative performance of the two methods did not vary with habitat type or visibility. The methods detected different species, suggesting that they should be used together to maximise the range of species recorded. We found that habitat type was the primary driver of variation in species richness, with scrub and montane forest having higher species richness scores than other habitats.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. African Journal of Ecology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | bioacoustics; bird survey; habitat heterogeneity; Kenya; species richness; survey techniques |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC NE/N012542/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2019 14:02 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:43 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/aje.12596 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:142742 |
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