The soundscape in mangrove forests will be splendidly complicated. Should you prime your ears, you may likelihood to listen to mudskippers sloshing their bellies throughout silky mud, or fiddler crabs pattering between their burrows. Should you’re fortunate, a rustling overhead may point out monkeys creeping alongside branches, intently curious, or it could possibly be a Brahminy kite taking off, hovering again out to hunt at sea. However a sound you’re positive to listen to is birdsong.
Researchers in Peninsular Malaysia lately used this coastal avian refrain to check how chook species richness varies based on a number of mangrove habitat traits.
They discovered that mangrove forests with older, bigger and taller timber, and with larger cover cowl and understory complexity, supported a greater diversity of species. Mangrove specialist birds are notably extra prone to be present in these bigger, extra mature websites, based on the findings, revealed within the journal Biotropica.
“When the habitat itself is structurally very complicated, we count on extra species to have the ability to match into it by occupying what we name ecological niches,” research co-author Chong Leong Puan, a forestry scientist on the College of Putra Malaysia (UPM), instructed Mongabay. “So conserving massive and outdated areas of mangrove is totally important.”
Puan and his colleagues used bioacoustics — using audio recording gadgets to hearken to animals of their pure habitats — to check the chook communities at 4 mangrove forest reserves in Selangor state on the southwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Every reserve was in a distinct stage of restoration; the youngest patches of habitat had been roughly 10 years outdated, whereas the oldest had been planted greater than 4 a long time in the past.
They arrange 20 automated audio recorders throughout the habitats and used acoustic software program and native chook specialists to decipher the calls and songs. They then analyzed the connection between birds and quite a lot of habitat variables assessed by way of subject surveys.
In whole, they recognized 53 chook species, together with two species categorized as close to threatened on the IUCN Pink Record — the olive-backed woodpecker (Chloropicoides rafflesii) and the mangrove pitta (Pitta megarhyncha) — in addition to a number of owls and different birds of prey. The biggest and most mature web site, Kuala Selangor Nature Park, supported by far essentially the most chook species, whereas the smallest web site, Banjar Utara Forest Reserve, had the least.
The crew say their findings point out that birds are helpful benchmarks of mangrove ecosystem well being and counsel that monitoring mangrove-dwelling chook communities utilizing bioacoustics could possibly be a easy and cost-effective manner for land managers to trace the progress of mangrove restoration initiatives.
“We regularly plant mangroves, however we don’t essentially know at what stage we’ve achieved what we got down to do when it comes to bringing again biodiverse wildlife communities,” Puan mentioned. “Finding out birds utilizing bioacoustics is an alternate and fast manner of getting solutions to those questions.”
Safety and restoration
Lavatory Yen Yi, a bioacoustics analysis fellow at Sunway College in Malaysia, who wasn’t concerned within the research, mentioned the findings reaffirm what makes birds good indicators of mangrove well being. “Many birds are extremely cellular and reply nearly instantly to habitat adjustments,” she mentioned. They’re additionally usually specialists too, she added, requiring very particular kinds of meals of their habitat.
Lavatory agreed that monitoring chook communities utilizing bioacoustics has clear potential for monitoring the long-term progress of mangrove restoration. She mentioned bioacoustics is more and more utilized in Southeast Asia, the place it permits chook researchers to assemble long-term and in-depth knowledge from dense forests that will in any other case be impractical to survey on foot. “[Bioacoustics] additionally minimizes the impact of the presence of human observers on birds’ vocal exercise, which will increase the prospect of detecting uncommon and endangered species,” she added.
The habitat traits that positively influenced the variety of chook species in the course of the research had been: rising cover cowl, common tree top, forest age and measurement, variety of saplings, and floor cowl complexity.
The authors name on forest managers to contemplate these habitat variables after they plan restoration packages, bearing in mind how the tree species they choose to plant may have an effect on the eventual biodiversity outcomes of the challenge. Optimizing planting to attain good cover cowl, top and forest complexity, as an illustration, may probably maximize the advantages for biodiversity, ecological resilience and total ecosystem well being, they are saying.
Nonetheless, Puan mentioned it’s essential to acknowledge that choosing essentially the most appropriate mangrove species for a given web site will depend upon many extra elements past whether or not or not it’s good for biodiversity. Mangrove ecosystems are ruled by a means of pure succession, he mentioned, whereby tree species naturally outcompete and exchange one another because the forest grows and develops.
These complicated organic and bodily coastal interactions are all of the extra motive to preserve massive areas of current mangrove, based on Puan. Bigger blocks of mangrove usually span quite a lot of habitats, all the best way from mudflats and intertidal zones to dense forest. This mixture of habitats inevitably offers a greater diversity of shelter, meals sources and nesting choices for birds and different wildlife, he mentioned.
In Southeast Asia, such expansive mangrove areas are essential stopover websites for birds migrating alongside the East Asia-Australasian Flyway, the research notes.
A significant subsequent step for conservation efforts, subsequently, can be connecting up these bigger patches of mangrove by restoring and defending coastal habitat corridors. “Understanding how these ecosystems will be successfully linked and restored in a manner that helps the motion of chook species is crucial for his or her long-term survival and well being,” the research says.
“We needs to be doing replanting, and permitting these areas to develop to the stage that we would like for biodiversity,” Puan mentioned. “After which we also needs to be defending these areas that have already got all of the habitat options we would like — the massive, outdated, mature mangroves.”
Citations:
Rahim, A. H., Puan, C. L., Mah, A. N., Zakaria, M., Jamaludin, N., & Wahaf, N. S. (2025). Bioacoustic evaluation of mangrove well being: Affect of habitat traits on chook richness. Biotropica, 57(1). doi:10.1111/btp.13427
This article by Carolyn Cowan was first revealed by Mongabay.com on 3 February 2025. Lead Picture: A mangrove pitta, a chook specifically tailored to reside in mangroves, photographed at one of many survey websites in Selangor state. Picture courtesy of Al-Kautsar Hidayanto Abdul Rahim.
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