What effect do roads have on rainforest birds?
Although there has been a bit of work on this topic in the Neotropics, practically nothing is known about the effect of roads on rainforest birds in Africa.
In 2015, the government of Equatorial Guinea completed a road through the Luba Crater Scientific Reserve – an enormous reserve on the southern portion of Bioko Island. Before the road, the southern shores of Bioko were entirely inaccessible by road, which made the area very remote. Now that the road is cut, we aim to understand how it affects the avifauna of the region.
In collaboration with Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program and Drexel University, Biodiversity Initiative is carrying out a study designed to understand:
1)How the community of birds changes along the road vs. in the rainforest interior
2)How movement rate across the road compares to movement rates in forest interior
3)How avian malaria varies in the interior vs. along the road
4)How the effect of the road varies with elevation.
Equatoguinean university student Amancio Motove Etingue with a Bar-tailed Trogon (Apaloderma vittatum) captured during phase 1 of our road study.