Effects of breeding colony restoration and habitat selection model of Blue-tailed Bee-eaters (Merops philipinnus) in Kinmen

• Main Authors: Yi-Ping Wang, 王怡平
• Other Authors: Hsiao-Wei Yuan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48846284809670766764

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 森林學研究所 === 93 === Chapter 1 Blue-tailed Bee-eaters (Merops philipinnus) are summer migrant to Kinmen Island. They breed from May to August. I cleaned the vegetation and old nest holes on the slope of used breeding colonies to test if these two are important factors for bee-eaters to abandon old colony. I also evaluated the effects of cleaning (treatment) on bee-eaters’ breeding performance comparing with no cleaning (control). There was no significant difference in terms of environment and slope physical characteristics except for a lower vegetation cover for the treatment (0 %) than control (34.5%) groups. There was also no significant difference in clutch size, hatching rate and breeding success rate between these two groups. However, with the increased of slope area after cleaning, the nest holes density increased and there was a positive relationship between number of nest holes and available nesting space. Therefore, cleaning might not affect the bee-eaters’ breeding success, but it could increase the breeding population size. With the radio-telemetry on four adult bee-eaters, I found the average feeding distance during the nestling period was 170.4 m with the longest distance as 673.3 m and the average feeding area was 23.3 ha. Bee-eaters preferred to feed on grassland and agriculture field, which might be related to the distribution of food resources. Chapter 2 The Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philipinnus) is summer breeder in Kinmen. The purpose of this research was trying to identify what factors including bank features and landscape features influencing breeding habitat selection of bee-eaters. I found bee-eaters preferred to nest on bank oriented from North to East, presumed there was stable temperature and humidity condition in burrows. Different kinds of bank feature types and landscape type were classified by cluster analysis, then separated into nest-site and non-nest-site by discriminant analysis. In bank feature types, bee-eaters preferred to use high and wide sandy soil bank without high vegetation in front, implying that bee-eaters preferred to nest on big slope providing more nesting space, and environment being easy to detect predators. Comparing all the nest-site with the non-nest-site on the island, in radius 200 m of colony, bee-eaters preferred to breed in the environment with high landscape heterogeneity and more water area, meaning that high insect prey availability in bee-eater’s breeding habitat. I also designed a habitat investigation checklist which could be used for future bee-eater studies.