Study On Community And Species Diversity Of Wetland Birds In The Urban Areas Of Changsha City, Hunan Province

Nowadays people attach more importance to the effect, ecological, social and economic values of wildlifes. Birds are the main parts of wildlifes. Wetland bird is not only performing the energy transformation and preserving the stability of ecosystem, but also an indicator for monitoring and evaluating wetland ecosystem. Wetland bird communities, species diversity and habitats in the urban areas of Changsha city were studied from April 2007 to March 2008. Major conclusions of this paper are as following:1. A total number of 63 wetland birds including 26 waterbirds were recorded, which belong to 10 orders and 30 families. Among them, there are 30 species of residents (47.62%),14 species of summer migrants (22.22%),16 species of winter migrants (25.40%) and 3 species of passage migrants (4.76%).2. A total number of 60 bird species were recorded in river haibitats,48 species in fishing grounds and 23 in the ricefield in the urban areas of Changsha city. Among them, fishing grounds had the highest level of mean density (2.69/hm2), and rivers had the lowest level of mean density (1.41/hm2).3. Shannon-wiener diversity index indicated that bird diversity in the rivers was higher than the other two habitat types (4.2157), and rice field had the lowest level of bird diversity (3.6148). Comparison on wetland birds community of different haibitat types showed that species richness was Liyanghe>Xiangjiang>Xianjiahu fishing ground >Heishikeng fishing ground>Yuelu fishing ground>ricefield. G-F diversity index showed that river was the highest in 3 habitat types (0.58).4. Jaccard similarity index showed that rivers were rough similar to fishing grounds; fishing grounds were rough similar to each other. Heishikeng and Yuelu were the most similar haibitat types (0.7194).5. Analysis of waterbird behaviours showed that search food was the main behaviour of herons in the fishing grounds; rest was the main behaviour in both rivers and ricefield. Mann-Whitney U test indicated that there were difference of rest behaviour between rivers and ricefield (P=0.007<0.01); there were significant difference of rest and other behaviours between rivers and fishing grounds (P=0.000<0.001):there were significant difference of food-search and other behaviours between rivers and fishing grounds (P=0.000<0.001).