Agricultural Operations Effect on Bird Species Diversity and Richness in Two Agro-Ecological Zones Edo state Nigeria

Abstract

This research study examined the influence of agricultural operations effect in Leventis Foundation Farm Weppa- Agenebode, Edo state Nigeria. The farm is the largest privately owned in Nigeria,  The farm is was divided into three compartments for the purpose of this study, Arable crop unit, Agroforestry unit,and wetland. The crop grown in the farm are as follows, rice, cassava, maize and soya bean. Others are cashew, mango citrus, oil palm,and teak. Point count method was used to collect data on bird species.  Counting stations or predefined spots were established in roosting sites, wetland and feeding sites as well as forest edges. Counting bands of the50m radius were used for all the stations. The minimum distance between two counting per each study sites stations was 200m. The number of counting stations was determined by the site size. In all, 30 counting station were used, 15 counting stations in each compartment were laid out. PAST model was used to analyze the diversity index, SHE analysis, diversity profile and plot the diversity index in different compartments.A total of 902 bird encounters was made with one hundred twenty (120) bird species belonging toforty-eight (48) families and sixteen (16) orders were observed in thestudy area.Agroforestry unit has higher bird species diversity of (52) bird species than Arable crop unit (27) and Wetland (42). Arable crop unit has bird species richness (324) followed by Agroforestry unit (234) and wetland (115). Within Arable crop unit compartment the result indicates that rice plot has the highest (218) bird species richness, followed by maize plot (155) and the least was soya bean plot (40). This was followed by maize. In agroforestry unit, Citrus plantation has the highest bird species richness (71)followed by cashew plantation (67) and the least was Teak plantation (29).  diversity inShannon_Hdex indicates that Agroforestry unit has the highest index of 3.578 followed by wetland unit 3.567 and Arable crop unit has 2.946 which was the smallest.