Data on bird communities and vegetation in relation to altitude and habitat alteration in the Kalakad - Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India

The dataset contains data on bird communities and habitat collected between 1997 and 1999 from Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India, related to the following two publications:

Raman, T. R. S., Joshi, N. V. & Sukumar, R. 2005. Tropical rainforest bird community structure in relation to altitude, tree species composition, and null models in the Western Ghats, India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 102: 145-157. https://archive.org/details/journalofbomb10222005bomb/page/145/mode/2up

Raman, T. R. S. & Sukumar, R. 2002. Responses of tropical rainforest birds to abandoned plantations, edges, and logged forest in the Western Ghats, India. Animal Conservation 5: 201-216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1367943002002251

GEOGRAPHICAL AREA: Kalakad-Mundathurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), 895 km² sanctuary located between 8°25′ to 8°53′ N and 77°10′ to 77°35′ E in Tamil Nadu state in the Western Ghats mountain range of India.

TAXONOMIC SCOPE: Birds, trees

Supplementary information

The Appendix of Raman and Sukumar (2002) is included in the dataset as an open document format word (ODT) file.

Three Tables from Raman et al. (2005) are included in the dataset as an open document format worksheet (ODS) file.

Methods
Bird data are from 5-minute variable radius point count surveys along points distributed along 21 transects (14 in rainforests and 7 in plantations or plantation-rainforest edges). The methods for bird and vegetation/habitat sampling are as described in the above publications and in this doctoral thesis: Raman, T. R. S. 2001. Community ecology and conservation of mid-elevation tropical rainforest bird communities in the southern Western Ghats, India. PhD thesis, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Further details are available in the usage notes below, reproduced from the README.TXT file.