Hadis Tadele Desta¹ , P.N. Dzakpasu² , N.M. Lyonga³

1 Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2 Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
3 Tropical Plant Exploration Group (TroPEG), P.O. Box 18 Mundemba, Cameroon
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, 2016, Vol. 6, No. 3   doi: 10.5376/ijmeb.2016.06.0003
Received: 23 Jul., 2016    Accepted: 27 Jul., 2016    Published: 03 Nov., 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Desta H.T., Dzakpasu P.N. and Lyonga N.M, 2016, Patterns of Sunbird (Family: Nectariniidae) Visitation to Four Sympatric Plant Species in Kibale National Park, Uganda, International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, 6(3): 1-8 (doi: 10.5376/ijmeb.2016.06.0003)

This study was conducted in Kibale National Park in July 2014. It was to investigate patterns of sunbird (Family: Nectariniidae) visitation to four sympatric plant species. We observed four plant species (Spathodea campanulata, Lilium sp., Callistemon citrinus and Erythrina sp.) which were selected based on a preliminary observation, that all plant species were visited by sunbirds with some variation in visitation dependent on the time of day. Eight species of sunbirds were identified as active visitors of the four sympatric plant species and evidence for partitioning of visitation to these plants were observed. Erythrina and Callistemon were the most visited (seven out of the eight sunbird species visited). Olive-bellied sunbird visited all our focal plants. Territorial behaviour was observed for Green-headed sunbird, which led to an observation and/or conclusion that less competitive sunbirds like the Olive-bellied sunbirds were propelled to switch feeding preference.

Ornithophilous flowers; Kibale; Resources partitioning; Sunbirds; Pollination; Sympatric species