IK204 Diurnal activity cycles of a small passerine bird guild across SE Sulawesi islands
Darren O’Connell – Trinity College Dublin
(start date 22 June)
Island biogeography has been one of the primary driving forces behind the development of the theory
of evolution. It was Charles Darwin who was struck by differences in bird populations on the Galapagos
Islands, and in recent years a great deal of research has been conducted on the finches of those
islands. However, when Darwin returned from his travels, he spent a great many years considering
and refining his ideas. He seemed reluctant to present them to the scientific community. It appears it
was correspondence with Alfred Russell Wallace (working near to Sulawesi, in an area that now bears
his name) that prompted Darwin to present his work to the Linnaean Society in London. Wallace had
been fascinated by the small, but clear, differences he had seen between the island populations of
Indonesia. Although the terms “island biogeography” and “allopatric speciation” were not coined until
much later, it is clear that both Darwin and Wallace understood these concepts.
Indonesia is a perfect country for studying island biogeography, as it is comprised of
somewhere in excess of 17,000 islands. Several new vertebrate species have been reported from
Indonesia in recent years, and at least three new bird species from islands just off Sulawesi. Clearly
the islands of Indonesia have yet to reveal all of their secrets. Indeed, work by Operation Wallacea
teams has revealed new bird populations on Kabaena, the Wakatobi Islands and mainland Sulawesi.
An ongoing research partnership between Trinity College in Dublin and Halu Oleo University in Kendari
(SE Sulawesi) is continuing to make further discoveries.
This project will focus on an ecological guild of small passerine birds (sunbirds, white-eyes,
flycatchers and flowerpeckers) found in SE Sulawesi. The species in this guild all compete for similar
resources and mainly have a mixed diet of nectar, fruit and invertebrates. Their similar lifestyles will
have forced these species to partition resources to avoid direct competition. In order to understand
this competitive dynamic an accurate understanding of the relative and absolute abundances of the
different species of the study guild is necessary.
The student on this project will be part of the transect team and help with abundance
measurements. This project will focus on two key periods of the day; early morning and late
afternoon/evening. Identical transects will be conducted at both times of day. In addition, while
assessing the density of local bird populations, the feeding behaviour of our study species will be
recorded. Data collection will take place on the islands of Kabaena, Buton and mainland Sulawesi.
Peaks in song and feeding activity have been reported for bird populations across the globe.
Variation at either end of the day appears to be driven by energetic constraints and the “body
condition” of individual birds, while local climate (e.g. temperature and rainfall) may dictate activity
during the middle of the day. However, while we know there is variation, we have not documented
the nature of this variation in our study guild of small passerines in Indonesia. These temporal patterns
of activity have generally been poorly studied in the tropics and this project will provide important
evidence to fill this knowledge gap.
As we assess the absolute and relative densities of our guild members using transects, it is
important to provide evidence that the way in which the transects are conducted generate realistic
estimates of the bird species being surveyed. Relative and absolute estimates of the population
density of study guild members, as well as an absolute estimate of the entire study guild biomass and
a biodiversity index for the study guild will be calculated for both morning and evening transects. All
values will be compared to assess how morning and evening estimates vary. It may be possible that
different members of the study guild are “temporally partitioning”, being more active at different
times of the day from each other so as to avoid direct competition for resources. It is hoped that this
project will offer a validation of the current survey technique, while adding additional behavioural
information for species within the study guild.
Suggested reading
It is recommended that you start with the text books (indicated with an asterisk) and work out from
there. The reading list is split into several sections to provide an overview of the general areas that
will be of use to you.
Cycles of Activity
John G. Blake (1992) Temporalvariation in point counts of birds in a lowland wet forest in Costa Rica.
Condor 94: 265-275.
John P. Kelly and Chris Wood (1996) Diurnal, intraseasonal, and intersexual variation in foraging
behavior of the Common Yellowthroat. Condor 98: 491-500.
R. T. Holmes, T. W. Sherry and S. E. Bennett (1978). Diurnal and individual variability in the foraging
behavior of American Redstarts (Setophagaruticilla). Oecologia 36: 141-149.
Sarah G. Taylor and Warren L. Paul (2006) Minimal diurnal change in foraging time in an Australian
passerine, the White-Browed Babbler Pomatostomus superciliosus. Journal of Avian Biology 37: 527531.
Peter Ward (Jan., 1969) seasonal and diurnal changes in the fat content of an equatorial bird.
Physiological Zoology 42: 85-95.
Robert J. Thomas et al. (2002) Eye size in birds and the timing of song at dawn. Proceedings of the
Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 269: 831–837. DOI 10.1098/rspb.2001.1941
Predation Risks
R. MacLeod, A. G. Gosler and W. Cresswell (2005) Diurnal mass gain strategies and perceived predation
risk in the Great Tit Parus major. Journal of Animal Ecology 74: 956-964.
Neil B. Metcalfe and Susan E. Ure (1995) Diurnal variation in flight performance and hence potential
predation risk in small birds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 261: 395-400.
Jean-Marc Thiollay (1999) Frequency of Mixed Species Flocking in Tropical Forest Birds and Correlates
of Predation Risk:An Intertropical Comparison. Journal of Avian Biology 30: 282-294.
Bird Identification and Species Biology
*Coates BJ, Bishop KD (1997) A guide to the birds of Wallacea. Alderly, QLD, Australia: Dove
publications.
*Cheke, R. A. and Mann, C. F. (2008a) Family Nectariniidae (Sunbirds). In del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and
Christie, D.A. (Eds.), Handbook of birds of the world. Volume 13: Penduline-tits to Shrikes. Barcelona:
Lynx Edicions.
*Cheke, R. A. and Mann, C. F. (2008b) Family Dicaeidae (Flowerpeckers). In del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and
Christie, D.A. (Eds.), Handbook of birds of the world. Volume 13: Penduline-tits to Shrikes. Barcelona:
Lynx Edicions.
*van Balen, S. (2008) Family Zosteropidae (White-eyes). In del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and Christie, D.A.
(Eds.), Handbook of the birds of the world. Volume 13: Penduline-tits to Shrikes. Barcelona: Lynx
Edicions.
Sulawesi
*Whitten T, Henderson GS, Mustafa M (2002) The ecology of Sulawesi. The ecology of Indonesia series,
vol. 4. Hong Kong: Periplus Editions.
Lee, T., Sodhi and Prawiradilaga, D (2007) The importance of protected areas for the forest and
endemic avifauna of Sulawesi (Indonesia). Ecological Applications, 17; 1727-1741.
Carel P. van Schaik and Michael Griffiths (1996) Activity periods of Indonesian rain forest mammals
Biotropica 28: 105-112.
Sangster G, King BF, Verbelen P, Trainor CR (2013) A New Owl Species of the Genus Otus (Aves:
Strigidae) from Lombok, Indonesia. PLoS ONE 8(2): e53712. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0053712
Harris JBC, Rasmussen PC, Yong DL, Prawiradilaga DM, Putra DD, Round PD, et al. (2014) A New Species
of Muscicapa Flycatcher from Sulawesi, Indonesia. PLoS ONE 9(11): e112657.
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.011265
Kelly, S. B. A., Kelly, D. J., Cooper, N., Bahrun, A., Analuddin, K. and Marples, N. M. (2014) Molecular
and phenotypic data support the recognition of the Wakatobi Flowerpecker (Dicaeum kuehni) from
the unique and understudied Sulawesi Region. PLoS ONE, 9: e98694. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0098694.
Rasmussen, P.C., Wardill, J.C., Lambert F.R. and Riley, J (2000) On the specific status of the Sangihe
White-eye Zosterops nehrkorni, and the taxonomy of the Black-crowned White-eye Z. atrifrons
complex. Forktail 16: 69-82.
Indrawan, M., Rasmussen, P.C. and Sunarto (2008) A New White-Eye (Zosterops) from the Togian
Islands, Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 120: 1-9
Robinson-Dean, J. C., Willmott, K. R., Catterall, M. J., Kelly, D. J., Whittington, A., Phalan, B., Marples,
N. M. and Boeadi, D. R. S. (2002) A new subspecies of Red-backed Thrush Zoothera erythronota
kabaena subsp. nov.(Muscicapidae: Turdidae) from Kabaena island, Indonesia. Forktail: 1-10.
http://orientalbirdclub.org/forktail18/