IK202 Variation in resource preferences of bird species within a small passerine guild across habitats within and between 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 islands off the south-east coast of mainland Sulawesi, including Kabaena, one of the focal islands of this study. 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. Changes to this competitive dynamic, due to anthropogenic influences or differences in the fundamental ecology between islands, may change how resources are partitioned between sites.
Knowing how much food is available to the birds in our study guild is fundamental to understanding the selection pressures on them and the competition they experience from the other species. The project will concentrate on assessment of the food available by estimating food abundance (fruit, flowers and insects) using a standardized method. Different species will have different food preferences and this will drive the direction of any divergence in feeding niche. This project will therefore also focus on discovering what the food preferences of each species are at each site, and how they change as the species present change between islands. Where food is abundant we would expect a higher density of birds, but also perhaps more specialisation on parts of that diet, as resource partitioning becomes possible. It might also be expected that there will be habitat partitioning when resources are scarce. However, it may be the whole species which specialises on one food type, or it may be that some individuals specialise on some parts of the diet and other individuals on a different food type. This project will address these questions.
The student on this project will be part of the transect team and help with abundance measurements in morning and evening transects. In addition, while counting the birds encountered, they will record the feeding behaviour of any of our study species seen feeding. The return leg of the morning transect will be used to record fruit and flower abundance using a standardized method to

give a relative measure of food available which can be compared between sites. On the return leg of the evening transect they will hang up sticky traps and carry out beating tray sampling for insect abundance measurements. The sticky traps will be collected the following morning. Data collection will take place on the islands of Kabaena, Buton and mainland Sulawesi.
By monitoring the availability of fruit, nectar and invertebrate resources in a variety of habitats, with anthropogenic disturbance and the food preferences of birds within those areas, it will be possible to investigate whether or not the study species can resolve increases in competitive pressure by partitioning. An analysis of data collected in this project should identify which small passerine bird species are sensitive to changes in habitat complexity and which are robust. Such answers will have conservation implications for agricultural practises and management of forests in
Indonesia.
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.
*Michael Begon, Colin R. Townsend, John L. Harper (2005) Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems,
4th Edition.Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. ISBN: 978-1-4051-1117-1
*Mark D. Hunter, Takayuki Ohgushi, Peter W. Price (2012) Effects of Resource Distribution on Animal
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Competitive Exclusion
Lydia Beaudrot, Matthew J. Struebig, Erik Meijaard, S. van Balen, Simon Husson and Andrew J.
Marshall (2013) Co-occurrence patterns of Bornean vertebrates suggest competitive exclusion is strongest among distantly related species. Oecologia 173: 1053–1062 DOI 10.1007/s00442-013-2679-
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Jean-Yves Barnagaud et al. (2014) Ecological traits influence the phylogenetic structure of bird species co-occurrences worldwide. Ecology Letters 17: 811–820. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12285
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Resource partitioning
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J. Traba, M. B. Morales, C. P. Carmona and M. Paula Delgado (2015) Resource partitioning and niche segregation in a steppe bird assemblage. Community Ecology 16: 178-188. DOI:
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Gretchen Raschand John L. Craig (1988)Partitioning of nectar resources by New Zealand honeyeaters.
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Miguel A. Rodrıguez-Girones and Luis Santamarıa (2005) Resource partitioning among flower visitors and evolution of nectar concealment in multi-species communities. Proc. R. Soc. B 272, 187–192. doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.2936
Bird Identification and Species Biology
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*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.
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Sulawesi
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