A checklist of avifauna of Mangalore University, Karnataka, India

: The study of the avifaunal diversity was carried out in the Mangalore University campus, located in Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka from 2013 to 2021, in and around the campus. A total of 150 bird species belonging to 18 orders and 56 families were recorded during the study. Out of these, the study area supports five species which are endemic to the Western Ghats. The feeding guild analysis revealed that the insectivorous group had the highest number of species (53 species). The study provides baseline data for monitoring the avifauna in the campus and demonstrates the importance of the area in bird conservation.


INTRODUCTION
Birds are one of the widely distributed vertebrates, showing maximum diversity. They play a key role in the ecosystem as environmental/biodiversity indicators. The diversity of birds, taxonomy and their distribution are well documented in India (Ali & Ripley 1987;Kazmierczak 2006;Grimmett et al. 2011). The global species accounts for a total of 10,721 species (Clements et al. 2019). India also has a rich avifaunal diversity with 1,340 species, which account for 12% of the world's total species (Praveen et al. 2021). Of these, 535 species of birds have been reported from Karnataka (Praveen et al. 2018).
Due to increased anthropogenic activities there is a continuous change in landscape (Jha et al. 2000;Purvis & Hector 2000), demanding the need for monitoring schemes to know the major flora and fauna at the global as well regional levels (Gadgil 1996). Bird studies help in understanding the importance of landscape in terms of their conservation. Continuous monitoring helps in understanding the habitat and distribution, which is crucial in planning effective conservation strategies (Paul & Cooper 2005).
There have been few ornithological studies carried out in Dakshina Kannada District, from coastal Karnataka (Shivashankar et al. 2011). Previously, (Ramitha & Vijayalaxmi 2001) reported 56 species of birds belonging to 31 families, however, in their study they covered University Campus along with some adjoining areas like Pavoor, Assaigoli, Someshwara and Netravathi bridge. Except for this earlier report, no detailed longterm studies have been made on the diversity of birds in the study area. In this context, the present study was undertaken to highlight the status, composition, feeding guilds and diversity of birds of Mangalore University Campus, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka.

Study site
The study was conducted in the Mangalore University campus located between 12.818°N & 74.917°E and is situated 20 km away from Mangalore City, Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka ( Figure 1). The campus is spread over 333 acres of land and it consists of different

Bird survey method
The bird exploration was conducted for a period of nine years (2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021) to maintain the baseline data in the Mangalore University campus. The data was collected by opportunistic encounters during the regular field visits. Later, the bird survey was conducted using fixed 16 transects of 100 m length (each transect is 50 m away from the other) in different sites (Yashmita-Ulman & Singh 2021), during the month February 2016 to 2021 for four days between 0700 to 1000 h and 1600 to 1900 h. The species were recorded for 15 minutes by covering the transect length at a slow pace. The birds were recorded directly using a pair of field binoculars (Bushnell 8 x 42, Celestron outland 10 x 42) and a camera (Nikon D750, Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 lens). The identification of birds was done using the following field guides (Ali 2002;Grimmett et al. 2011). The common name, scientific name, IUCN Red List status, IWPA 1972, CITES and migratory status is followed using (SoIB 2020; Praveen et al. 2021) eBird database. To compile the list of birds we used secondary data cited in eBird data (accessed 20 February 2021). The feeding guild data for each species was collected from the existing literature (Ali & Ripley 1987;Vinayak & Mali 2018;Harisha et al. 2021;Norbu et al. 2021).

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
A total of 150 species of birds, belonging to 56 families under 18 orders were recorded from the study area (Table 1; Images 1-33). The order Passeriformes dominated the study area with a maximum number of species, i.e., 80 species (53%) and with the lowest Anseriformes, Bucerotiformes, Falconiformes, Suliformes, sharing one species (1%) each ( Figure 2 (Table 1).
Karnataka is home to 535 bird species (Praveen et al. 2018) and we recorded 150 (28%) species during the current study at Mangalore University Campus. Several other bird studies were conducted in different University campuses of Karnataka (Nazneen et al. 2001;Rajashekara & Venkatesh 2016, 2017Harisha et al. 2021). Since there is a limitation in observation, the long-term monitoring of these species is essential (Schlegel & Rupf 2010). Our study provides important baseline information and the importance of species presence; this will help in the long term monitoring of birds in the campus besides acting as an essential document in planning conservation efforts in the campus.

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