| Abstrakt: |
In Peninsular Malaysia, from the 1980s there has been progressive expansion of an industry based on specially designed buildings to house colonies of edible-nest swiftlets (Apodidae, Collocaliini). The structures are termed house-farms and the birds, house-farm swiftlets. Genetic research has so far failed to establish affinity with any wild form of swiftlets that builds ‘white’ edible nests; we therefore identify house-farm swiftlets only as Aerodramussp. The diet profiles of house-farm swiftlets were compared in different landscapes in Perak State, Malaysia, using a high-throughput sequencing of total DNA extracted from faecal samples collected at six house-farms, located at Beruas, Gopeng, Ipoh and Pantai Remis, in the month of October 2017. Landscape profiles of the presumed foraging area within 6 km radius of these six sites were estimated using Google MyMaps, and categorised as urban, monocrop or mixed-use. Based on the partial mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I region (ca. 218-bp), 4852 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were recovered, of which 266 belonged to arthropods. Overall, the diets of house-farm swiftlets assessed in this study mainly comprised Diptera (64.49%), followed by Hemiptera (16.73%), Coleoptera (13.47%), Lepidoptera (2.04%), Hymenoptera (1.63%), Blattodea (0.82%) and Odonata (0.82%). Ipoh (urban landscape) and Pantai Remis (mixed) recorded the highest diversity of dietary insects. Presence of the aquatic insect families in these diets may reflect extensive freshwater bodies in the urban landscape. Coleoptera and Hemiptera were found to be dominant in the swiftlet diets at two monocrop landscapes Beruas OP1 and Beruas OP2, but did not include the weevil Elaeidobius kamerunicus, an important pollinator of oil palm. Results confirm that house-farm swiftlets are opportunistic feeders, so that variation in the diet profiles in Perak reflected the availability of insect prey within the landscapes of the foraging ranges. |
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