Hornbills among top seed dispersers, most threatened

What’s in the news?

  • Researchers from Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, have mapped the different frugivore (fruit eater) birds and their interactions that are important for the forest ecosystem.
  • The study carried out in Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh noted that hornbills, one among the large-sized frugivores, are the top seed dispersers.
  • However, unfortunately, they are also the most threatened.
  • This is because they are hunted for meat, and the tribal communities use their feathers for head dresses.
  • The study looked at 43 tree species, 48 frugivore bird species that were seen visiting them.
  • A single bird species could visit different tree species, and a single tree species would be visited by different bird species.
  • Thus, a complex network of over 400 interactions was created and studied.
  • The trees were classified into small-, medium- and large-seeded. The large-seeded trees mainly depended on hornbills and imperial pigeons for their dispersal. The medium-size seeded trees were visited by bulbuls, barbets along with hornbills and imperial pigeons. Though the frequency of visits was similar for all four bird species, the number of fruits removed from trees was high for hornbills.
  • Among the different bird species, hornbills were found to be the most effective seed dispersers. They were found to swallow and disperse most of the fruits they handled. They also removed maximum number of fruits — and therefore seeds — in every visit to a fruiting tree.
  • They swallow the fruit as a whole causing no damage to the seed. They are known to disperse seeds far away from the parent plant – as a matter of fact, studies have shown that they can disperse up to 13 km.
Concluding Remarks:
  • Previous studies by the team also noted that when the number of hornbills decreased in an area, the regeneration of large-seeded plants that were primarily dispersed from them was also affected.
  • It is important to note that seeds that fall under the parent tree face heavy competition, predation by rodents and insects and fungal infections. So their chances of survival are very low.
  • Plants depend on frugivore birds to disperse the seeds at favourable sites, which have low competition and predation pressures, to expand their geographic range.
  • And so the decline of frugivores could severely affect the ecosystem.

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