Poles Apart: The Structure and Composition of the Bird Community in Bamboo in the Eastern Himalaya

Abstract

AbstractBamboo is a unique, dynamic, and diverse group of plants shown to harbor communities of obligate specialists. Such phenomena, however, have primarily been investigated in the Neotropics. Additionally, mechanisms underlying specialist bamboo communities are generally poorly understood. By studying bird and arthropod communities across two seasons in bamboo and adjacent rainforest in the Eastern Himalaya, we provide some of the first systematic evidence of bamboo-specialist communities. We show that arthropod communities differ significantly between habitats and across seasons and that bamboo-specialist birds likely feed on distinct arthropods within bamboo sheaths using specialized bills and unique foraging behaviors in this part of the world. We hypothesize that this bird-bamboo association could be driven by a dietary specialization to the unique arthropods in bamboo. These results contribute to our understanding of how species can specialize on temporally dynamic resources and highlight the need for more research on such lesser-known habitats.

Keywords: arthropod community; bill morphology; bird-bamboo associations; foraging behavior; habitat specialization; resource availability.