Avian Diversity in the Himalayas

Authors

  • Dhananjai Mohan Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/jgeu0975-1416.912

Keywords:

Diversity, bird species, indian himalayan region, distribution

Abstract

The Indian Himalayan mountain region is globally renowned for biological
diversity. The Himalayan mountain system contributes 10% of the world
bird’s species and about 8% of the world’s bird species breed in this region.
However, bird species are not evenly distributed from East to West Himalayan
region; various factors are responsible for bird’s diversity gradient seen in
this mountain chain. The present article is briefing on the bird’s species
diversity patterns in the Indian Himalayan region and is largely based on
the work carried out under Wildlife Institute of India and University of
Chicago collaborative research work titled ‘Study of bird species numbers
and densities in east and west Himalayas’ and has already been published in
many research papers.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Dhananjai Mohan, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Dhananjai Mohan received his graduation degree in Electrical Engineering
from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in the year 1986. Later he
joined the 1988 batch of Indian Forest Service and was allocated to the state
of Uttar Pradesh and later on its split to the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
He served as manager and management planner of protected areas in the
Himalayan and terai regions of erstwhile Uttar Pradesh. He served as an
Associate Professor in the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun
from 1998 to 2004 dealing with the subject of wildlife conservation and as
a Professor in the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun from 2006 to 2013
where he led avifaunal research and collaborated with University of Chicago
to conduct research on Himalayan bird diversity gradient. He did his Post-
Graduate Diploma in Wildlife Management in the year 1992. He was awarded
a Ph.D. degree on ‘Habitat selection of birds in New Forest, Dehradun,
India’ by the Forest Research Institute Deemed University, Dehradun. He
also served in the wildlife headquarters of Uttarakhand Forest department for
over five years. Before taking over as Director Wildlife Institute of India,
Dehradun in January 2020, he served as Principal Chief Conservator of
Forests, Planning and Financial Management and Chairman State Biodiver-
sity Board, in the state of Uttarakhand. He has written a book and contributed
a book chapter and has many publications particularly on avifauna, his pri-
mary interest. Some of these were published in topmost international journals like Nature, Nature communication, American naturalist, Biology letters and
Journal of Ornithology. Dr Mohan has been a passionate birdwatcher and
naturalist for nearly four decades and has spanned the length and breadth of
the country in pursuit of it.
Dr. Dhananjai is a fellow of Leadership for Environment and Develop-
ment (LEAD), a programme initiated by the Rockefeller foundation. He has
been a recipient of Dr Salim Ali fellowship of Ministry of Environment
and Forests, Govt. of India in 2005. He served as a consultant to TERI and
supervised a doctoral research and 10 M.Sc. dissertations in wildlife science
and forestry.

     

References

Avibase (2021) https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=IN

ebird (2021) https://ebird.org/region/IN?yr=all&m=&rank=lrec

Ghosh, M. and Price, T.D. (2014) Test for community saturation along the

Himalayan bird diversity gradient, based on within-species geographical

variation. Journal of Animal Ecology. 82: 628–638. https://doi.org/10.1

/1365-2656.12157

D. Mohan

Grimmett, R., Inskipp, C. and Inskipp, T. (1999) Birds of India, Pakistan,

Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Princeton

University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Hijmans, R. J., Cameron, S. E., Parra, J. L., Jones, P. G. and Jarvis, A.(2005)

Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas.

International Journal of Climatology. 25:1965–1978. https://doi.org/10

.1002/joc.1276

Martens, J. and Eck, S. (1995) Towards an ornithology of the Himalayas: sys-

tematics, ecology and vocalizations of Nepal birds. Bonn Zool. Monogr.

:1–445.

Orme, C. D. L., R. G. Davies, M. Burgess, F. Eigenbrod, N. Pickup, V. A.

Olson, A. J. Webster, T.-S. Ding, P. C. Rasmussen, R. S. Ridgely, A. J.

Stattersfield, P. M. Bennett, T. M. Blackburn, Gaston, K. J. and Owens,

I. P. F. (2005) Global hotspots of species richness are not congruent with

endemism or threat. Nature 436:1016–1019.

Price, T. D., Zee, J., Jamdar, K., and Jamdar, N. (2003) Bird species diversity

along the Himalaya: a comparison of Himachal Pradesh with Kashmir.

J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 100:394–410.

Price, T. D., and S. Gross. (2005) Correlated evolution of ecological dif-

ferences among the Old World leaf warblers in the breeding and

nonbreeding seasons. Pp. 359–372 in R. Greenberg and P. Marra, eds.

Birds of two worlds: the ecology and evolution of migration. Johns

Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD.

Price, T. D., Dhananjai, M., Thomas Tietze, D., Hooper, D., David C. L.,

Rasmussen, P. C. (2011) Determinants of northerly range limits along

the Himalayan bird diversity gradient. Am. Nat. 178, S97–S108.

Randi, E. V., Lucchini, T., Armijo-Prewitt, R. T., Kimball, E. L. and Ligon,

J. D. (2000) Mitochondrial DNA phylogeny and speciation in the

tragopans. Auk 117:1003–1015. https://doi.org/10.1642/0004-8038(20

117[1003:MDPASI]2.0.CO;2

Rasmussen, P. C. and Anderton, J. C.(2005) Birds of South Asia: the Ripley

guide. Lynx, Barcelona.

Roberts, T. J. (1991) The birds of Pakistan. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press,

Oxford.

Roberts, T. J. (1992) The birds of Pakistan. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press,

Oxford.

Avian Diversity in the Himalayas 29

Richman, A. D. and Price, T. D.(1992) Evolution of ecological differences in

the Old World leaf warblers. Nature 355:817–821. https://doi.org/10.2

/2411127

Spierenburg, P. (2005) Birds in Bhutan: status and distribution. Oriental Bird

Club, Bedford

Downloads

Published

2021-05-25

How to Cite

Mohan, D. (2021). Avian Diversity in the Himalayas. Journal of Graphic Era University, 9(1), 19–30. https://doi.org/10.13052/jgeu0975-1416.912

Issue

2021: Vol 9 Iss 1 2021

Section

Articles