| Abstrakt: |
Understanding the behavior of crane species is highly important for conservation and management activities. Unfortunately, cranes are facing deleterious threats due to human intervention, i.e., habitat loss and degradation, trapping and illegal hunting. This research's primary goals were to assess the relative quantity of cranes, the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites, and their endangerment at three separate study sites; River Indus (S1), River Kurram (S2) and Zara Dagger (S3). From 2019 to 2022, four years straight, the line transects surveys approach was used during the migratory season (November to March). In total, 1874 crane bird individuals, comprising 822 common cranes and 1052 demoiselle cranes were observed. The results about habitat preference indicated that demoiselle crane - Grus virgo and common crane Grus grus frequently utilized the River Indus (S1 = 20.238%) and River Kurram (S2 = 22.512%) especially grassland while in Zara Daggar (S3) they heavily utilized the semi-sandy habitat (39.114%). The results of crane diversity analysis revealed that demoiselle crane - G. grus and common crane - G. virgo diversity indices varied among three distinct habitats. In Indus River the higher diversity index was determined for common crane (H' = 0.3524 and D = 1.252) and species richness and uniform distribution for demoiselle crane. In Kurram river, the prevalent diversity index (H' = 0.2363 and D = 1.136), species richness (R = 0.1879 and Mn = 0.1397) and species evenness (E1 = 0.3323 and E2 = 0.2092) was ascertained for common crane than demoiselle crane. Likewise, in Zara Daggar, the higher diversity indices were determined for common crane than demoiselle crane. Three parasite species, i.e., Ascaridia sp. (21.127%), Fasciolopsis sp. (18.309%) and Echinochasmus sp. (15.845%) were especially abundant in faeces of cranes. On the contrarily, the Syngamus trachea (0.352%) was the lowest parasite in the faeces of cranes. The highest parasite relative abundance was detected in Zara Daggar (S3; 120 parasites; 42.253%) and the lowest one in River Indus (S1; 28.169%). This demonstrated that both crane species were inflected by different parasite species. Additionally, people's perspectives suggested that habitat loss and degradation, illegal hunting, and poaching are the main sources of harmful risks to crane species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
