IK203 The carrying capacity of different habitats in relation to a small passerine bird guild 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 compete and partition resources. The balance of this competitive dynamic is likely to change between habitat types, with different habitats potentially favouring certain guild members. These differences in habitat type may be due to differences in the fundamental ecology between sites or anthropogenic changes. Both may have important influences on the success of members of the study guild.
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 behaviour of the birds, giving insight into the guild dynamics. The return leg of the morning transect will be used to collect ecological data on the transect area, recording the habitat type and the abundance of fruiting and flowering plants. Data collection will take place on the islands of Kabaena, Buton and mainland Sulawesi.
Theoretically, the success of one guild member in a particular habitat is likely to increase its relative abundance within the guild. However, if carrying capacity (guild biomass) remains constant across habitats, there must be a reduction in numbers of other guild members. Conversely, if carrying capacity varies across habitats, we are interested to know whether the contribution (relative abundance) of guild members remains constant, or whether reductions or increases in carrying capacity favour particular guild members. While the answers to such questions are likely to have conservation implications for agricultural practises and forest management in Indonesia, they may also provide important information on the likelihood of successful colonisation of “new” islands by small passerine species.

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.
*Paul R. Krausman and Bruce D. Leopold (2013) Essential Readings in Wildlife Management and
Conservation. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. ISBN: 9781421408187
*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
Ideal Free Distribution
Samuel Hache, Marc-Andre Villard, and Erin M. Bayne (2013) Experimental evidence for an ideal free distribution in a breeding population of a territorial songbird. Ecology 94: 861–869.
Carrying Capacity
Douglas Loewenthal, Dane M Paijmansa and Philip AR Hockey. (2015) Year-round territoriality in longlived birds: rethinking the concept of carrying capacity. Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology 86: 23-
34. DOI:10.2989/00306525.2015.1016467
Jan H Beekman, Mennobart R van Eerden, Sjoerd Dirksen (1991) Bewick's Swan Cygnus columbianusbewickii utilising the changing resource of Potamogetonpectinatus during autumn in the
Netherlands. Wildfowl (Supplement No. 1): 238-248.
Jennifer A. Bright et al. (2015) Higher-tier agri-environment scheme enhances breeding densities of some priority farmland birds in England. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 203: 69–79.
James R. Lovvorn et al. (2013) Niche overlap, threshold food densities, and limits to prey depletion for a diving duck assemblage in an estuarine bay. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 476: 251–268. doi:
10.3354/meps10104
James Mallet (2012) The struggle for existence: how the notion of carrying capacity, K, obscures the links between demography, Darwinian evolution, and speciation. EvolEcol Res 14: 627-665.
Variation in Resources across Habitats
Ronald K. Mulwa et al. (2013) Seasonal fluctuations of resource abundance and avian feeding guilds across forest–farmland boundaries in tropical Africa. Oikos 122: 524–532. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-
0706.2012.20640.x
Stefan W. Ferger et al. (2014) Food resources and vegetation structure mediate climatic effects on species richness of birds. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23: 541–549.

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.
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/