Correlation between barn owl (Tyto alba) and tree species in two cropland habitats
2015
Aftab, A.
The barn owl (Tyto alba) is widely distributed throughout the world, it acts as a biological controlling agent for the rodents, mainly rats and mice. Undoubtedly, the rats and mice cause a substantial damage to the economically important crops in Pakistan. As such the annual economic losses are abundant. Being a natural predator of rodents, the barn owl population should inhibit their infestation in the agricultural farms. A present study was, therefore, designed to know the diet composition of raptor in an agro-ecosystem to know about the occurrence of rats and mice as its diet constituents. Investigation of pellet yielded 11,537 individual preys. They overall diet comprised 40.04% small mammals, S. murinus was more frequent prey item among insects. The result proves that the barn owl is an important natural enemy of vertebrate pests.
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