Hornbill abundance and breeding incidence in relation to habitat modification and fig fruit availability

Asian hornbills are known to forage and breed in fragmented rainforests and agroforestry plantations in human‐modified landscapes adjoining contiguous protected forests. However, the factors influencing year‐round hornbill abundance, demography and tracking of key food resources such as wild fig Ficus fruits in modified habitats and protected forests remain poorly understood. We carried out monthly surveys of two species of high conservation concern, the Vulnerable Great Hornbill (GH, Buceros bicornis) and the endemic Malabar Grey Hornbill (MGH, Ocyceros griseus) for 15 months and monitored ripe fig fruit availability for 12 months along 11 line transects (total length 24 km) in shade‐coffee plantations and adjoining continuous rainforests in a protected area (PA) in the Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats, India. Both hornbill species used plantations and the PA year‐round but distance sampling density estimates were higher in the PA in both nesting (GH by 57%; MGH by 50%) and non‐nesting (G..., The data were collected as described in Pawar et al. (2020), Ibis (https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.12895). This includes hornbill observations data from 11 line transects from the protected area (PA) and plantations (see file: Sites.csv). It includes fig phenology monitoring data from belt transect surveys as described in the publication.
, The 01_ReadMe.txt file contains details of each column of data in the following files that are included in the dataset.
02_Transects.csv: Details of 12 transects, survey efforts in each season and habitat for two hornbill species
03_Hornbill_observations.csv: Contains details of 778 hornbill encounters during the transect surveys, including habitats and seasons
04_Hornbill_Distance.csv: Hornbill detections dataset from transect surveys used as input for density estimation analyses using Distance package in R
05_Ficus_phenology.csv: Tree-wise observation dataset on fruiting phenology of figs from May 2017 to April 2018
06_HornbillGLM.csv: A consolidated input file including covariates data used in the GLM analyses for both species of hornbills
Sites.csv: This file provides details including locations of the transects surveyed. This file includes the following columns:
Sample.Label: Name of transect
Transect_code: Unique code used for transect
Length: Length of transect in km
Effort: Tota..., , **Changes after Jan 8, 2021:** 

The file Sites.csv (with the location details of the transects surveyed) was inadvertently overlooked in the previous submission. The file is now uploaded separately (6 Jan 2026).