The Splendid and Remarkable Anatomy of Hornbills — Tetrapod Zoology

The Ecology & Conservation of Asian Hornbills: Farmers of the Forest is excellent and data-packed and will be used regularly by those interested academically in hornbills, in the ecology or biology of tropical forest birds, or in avian conservation in the tropics. It is definitely not a general guide to hornbills or to Asian hornbills as a whole, however, and should be considered primarily focused on seed dispersal and ecology, and on conservation. As usual, the price is problematic and means that it is out of reach to interested amateurs and those without grants or institutional support. In summary, it is a highly impressive and important tour-de-force that provides a wealth of information on the past, present and future of Asian hornbill biology.

Margaret F. Kinnaird and Timothy G. O’Brien 2007. The Ecology and Conservation of Asian Hornbills: Farmers of the Forest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 13:978-0-226-43712-5, pp. 315. £47.50. UPDATE: the book is now out of print and I can’t see that secondhand sellers currently have it in stock.

Hornbills have been discussed at Tet Zoo on several previous occasions. See…

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Refs – –

Alexander, G. D., Houston, D. C. & Campbell, M. 1994. A possible acoustic function for the casque structure in hornbills (Bucerotidae). Journal of Zoology 233, 57-67.

Chamutpong, S., Ponglikitmongkol, M., Charoennitikul, W., Mudsri, S. & Poonswad. P. 2013. Hybridisation in the wild between the Great hornbill (Buceros bicornis) and the Rhinoceros hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros) in Thailand and its genetic assessment. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 61, 349-358.

Datta, A. 1998. Hornbill abundance in unlogged forest, selectively logged forest, and a forest plantation in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Oryx 32, 285-294.

Gonzalez, J.-C. T., Sheldon, B. C., Collar, N. J. & Tobias, J. A. 2013b. A comprehensive molecular phylogeny for the hornbills (Aves: Bucerotidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 67, 468-483.

Gonzalez, J.-C. T., Sheldon, B. C. & Tobias, J. A. 2013a. Environmental stability and the evolution of cooperative breeding in hornbills. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280, 20131297.

Hone, D. W. E., Naish, D. & Cuthill, I. C. 2012. Does mutual sexual selection explain the evolution of head crests in pterosaurs and dinosaurs? Lethaia 45, 139-156.

Hone, D. W. E. & Naish, D. 2013. The ‘species recognition hypothesis’ does not explain the presence and evolution of exaggerated structures in non-avialan dinosaurs. Journal of Zoology 290, 172-180.

Kinnaird, M. F., Hadiprakarsa, Y.-Y. & Thiensongrusamee, P. 2003. Aerial jousting by Helmeted hornbills Rhinoplax vigil: observations from Indonesia and Thailand. Ibis 145, 506-508.

Kinnaird, M. F. & O’Brien, T. G. 2007. The Ecology and Conservation of Asian Hornbills: Farmers of the Forest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Liang, H., McConkey, K. R. & Lim, J. Y. 2024. From beak to fruit: an Asian hornbill database for frugivory and seed dispersal research. Global Ecology and Conservation 51, e02879.

Meijer, H. J. 2014. The avian fossil record in Insular Southeast Asia and its implications for avian biogeography and palaeoecology. PeerJ 2:e295.

Naish, D. 2012. Birds. In Brett-Surman, M. K., Holtz, T. R. & Farlow, J. O. (eds) The Complete Dinosaur (Second Edition). Indiana University Press (Bloomington & Indianapolis), pp. 379-423.

Naish, D. 2015. [Review of] The ecology and conservation of Asian hornbills: farmers of the forest. Historical Biology 27, 954-956.

Plumptre, A. & Greiser-Johns, A. 2001. Changes in primate communities following logging disturbance. In Fimbel, R. A., Grajal, A. & Robinson, J. G. (eds) The Cutting Edge: Conserving Wildlife in Logged Tropical Forests. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 71-92.

Viseshakul, N., Charoennitikul, W., Kitamura, S., Kemp, A.C., Thong-aree, S., Surapunpitak, Y., Poonswad, P. & Ponglikitmongkol, M., 2011. A phylogeny of frugivorous hornbills linked to the evolution of Indian plants within Asian rainforests. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24, 1533-1545.