Study of the Bird Community in Agasthyamalai hills, Western Ghats, Kerala, India

Abstract

patterns of occurrence or distribution and generality of the pattern (Weins 1989, Vellend 2010). A community is structured by wide array of factors, competition, niche availability, spatial heterogeneity, predation, climatic stability, productivity, dispersal, speciation and many more (Hutchinson 1959, Pianka 1966, Vellend 2010). On the other hand, distribution of species may be influenced by species composition, abundance, behaviour, morphology and their association with the environment (Weins 1989). Owing to the complexity of the systems and interactions among them, the study of community ecology is rightly stated by Schoener (1986) as the ‘most tumultuous and alluring of ecology’s subdisciplines’. Studies on avifauna have been playing a pivotal role in addressing intricate questions and testing varied hypotheses relating to community ecology. As widely noted, methodological advances, well-studied taxonomy and natural history, mostly diurnal behaviour and conspicuousness make birds an easy species to study