Nestedness of bird assemblages in the karst forest fragments of southwestern Guangxi, China

Abstract

The limestone region in southwestern Guangxi contains the most typical karst landforms in the world. Due to their destruction, the original forests mainly survive in nature reserves in the form of fragmented areas. From June 2009 to September 2010 we conducted an investigation of 13 relatively isolated habitats or sites, selected from each of the 13 nature reserves in southwestern Guangxi, with the least amount of anthropological activity and the largest presence of the original vegetation, in order to study the distribution of birds on forest fragments. The distribution patterns of the birds and the factors which affect them were analyzed by using the “BINMATNEST” software and the Spearman’s rank correlation analysis, to determine: 1) whether nested patterns of birds in the karst area of southwestern Guangxi exist or not and 2) which factors are correlated with the nested patterns and the effect of these factors on forming nested patterns. The results show that the birds had statistically significant nested patterns in the karst area and the specificity of the habitat of the birds had a significant effect on the nested patterns. We suggest possible reasons for these results, based on the characteristics of the seasonal tropical rain forests in the study area and on neutral theory. We also urgently recommend that close attention be paid to the protection of the diversity of the environment for birds in all fragmented habitats.