Bird Diversity and Habitat Heterogeneity in the Urban and Sub-Urban Areas of Mueang Pattani District, Pattani Province

Abstract

This study was carried out in October 2020 – September 2021 to study bird diversity and habitat relationship in the urban areas of Mueang Pattani district, Pattani Province. The bird population contains 14 orders, 14 families, 85 genera, and 111 species. Most species were listed as the Least Concern in the IUCN endangered list, except 7 species. It was also found that the richness of bird species was highest in October. The Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index and evenness index of the total population were 3.14 and 0.21, respectively. Comparing the diversity index and evenness index of two areas, it was found that in the open areas (3.29 and 0.26, respectively) were higher than in the built-up areas (2.62 and 0.22, respectively). We analyzed the mean differences of diversity index, and it was found that in August September and October, the open areas were significantly more than the built-up areas (P=0.032, 0.015 and 0.002, respectively). In the study of human-bird interaction, it was found that the sampling groups most in viewed the birds had no effect, except some sampling groups that view birds positively on generating income from the bird's nest harvesting. Therefore, this study is vital to understand the bird ecology in the urban areas, providing the bird population and diversity for the conservation status (IUCN Data Red List) consideration and for conservation plans for the potential that support the population of birds, and potentially the other wildlifes in terms of feeding ground, nesting ground and roosting ground. Finally, this study can set the framework for the coexistence of humans and wildlife in the future.