Academic literature on the topic 'Neotropical parrots'

Neotropical parrots usually forage in forest canopies for nectar, flowers, leaves, fruit pulp, and seeds. As they have no all-purpose territories, these birds usually exploit vegetation mosaics in order to use plentiful resources as they become available. In this study we examine the use of a gallery forest in the southern Pantanal (Brazil) by a diverse parrot community that ranged from Brotogeris chiriri (a small species) to Ara chloroptera (a large one). Plant food resources principally used by parrots were abundantly available during the rainy season (fleshy fruits), the annual floods (fleshy fruits), and the dry season (flowers). While both smaller and larger species foraged on fruits, parakeets largely consumed the pulp, while larger parrot species used pulp and seeds. In the dry season parakeets foraged extensively on nectar, especially Inga vera nectar that was abundantly available during the last two months of the dry season, the harshest period of the year. Among larger parrots, only Propyrrhura auricollis frequently harvested nectar. Fruits maturing during floods, despite being fish- or water- dispersed were extensively used by the parrots. Hence, unlike what happens in most other Neotropical dry forests, occurrence of a fruiting peak during the annual flooding, which occurs in the transition from the wet to the dry season, constitutes an extra and significant episode of food availability, since in this period, fruit production normally declines. Therefore, the unique and abundant availability of flowers and fruits in this gallery forest may account for the presence of large parrot populations in the southern Pantanal.

Wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. To regulate its impact, laws and regulations have been implemented at the international and national scales. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has regulated the international legal trade since 1975. However, an important volume of illegal trade—mainly within countries—continues to threaten several vertebrate groups, which could be due to a lack of specific legislation or enforcement of existing regulations. Our aim was to gain a more accurate picture of poaching and legal possession of native parrots as pets in the Neotropics, where illegal domestic trade is currently widespread. We conducted a systematic search of the laws of each of the 50 countries and overseas territories, taking into account their year of implementation and whether the capture, possession and/or sale of parrots is permitted. We compared this information with legal exports reported by CITES to assess differences between the enforcement of international and national trade regulations. We found that only two countries (Guyana and Suriname) currently allow the capture, trade and possession of native parrots, while Peru allowed international legal trade until recently. The other countries have banned parrot trade from years to decades ago. However, the timing of implementation of international and national trade regulations varied greatly between countries, with half of them continuing to export parrots legally years or decades after banning domestic trade. The confusion created by this complex legal system may have hindered the adoption of conservation measures, allowing poaching, keeping and trade of protected species within and between neighboring countries. Most countries legally exported Neotropical parrot species which were not native to those countries, indicating that trans-border smuggling often occurred between neighboring countries prior to their legal exportations, and that this illicit activity continues for the domestic trade. Governments are urged to effectively implement current legislation that prohibits the trapping and domestic trade of native parrots, but also to develop coordinated alliances and efforts to halt illegal trade among them. Otherwise, illegal trade will continue to erode the already threatened populations of a large number of parrot species across the Neotropics.

Neotropical parrots forage for various food items such as seeds, fruit pulp, flowers, young leaves, and even arthropods. While foraging, many species wander over large areas that include both open and closed habitats. In this study, I examined parrot foraging activity during a brief synchronous and massive flowering in August 1998 in a tecoma savanna (dominated by Tabebuia aurea) in the southern Pantanal. Six parrot species, ranging from the small Brotogeris chiriri to the large Amazona aestiva, foraged for T. aurea nectar, but Nandayus nenday was by far the major nectar consumer, and the results of each of their visits, like those of the other species, was damage of a substantial proportion of the existing flower crop. Parrots foraged mostly during the afternoon, when nectar concentration tended to be higher. Nevertheless, compared to bird-pollinated flowers, which produce copious nectar, T. aurea had a smaller mean nectar volume per flower. Hence, presumably the amount of damage wreaked by these parrots resulted from their efforts to obtain part of their daily energy and water requirements. Thus, the synchronous and massive flowering occurring in such a brief period in the dry season may be related to, among other factors, the necessity of satiating predators such as parrots, which are still abundant in the Pantanal.

Parrots (Order: Psittaciformes) represent one of the most striking and ecomorphologically diverse avian clades, spanning more than two orders of magnitude in body size with populations occupying six continents. The worldwide diaspora of parrots is largely due to the pet trade, driven by human desire for bright, colorful, and intelligent animals as companions. Some introduced species have aptly inserted themselves into the local ecosystem and established successful breeding colonies all around the globe. Notably, the United States is home to several thriving populations of introduced species including red-masked parakeets (Psittacara erythrogenys), monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), nanday conures (Aratinga nenday), and red-crowned amazons (Amazona viridigenalis). Their incredible success globally begs the question as to how these birds adapt so readily to novel environments. In this commentary, we trace parrots through evolutionary history, contextualize existent naturalized parrot populations within the contiguous United States, and provide a phylogenetic regression analysis of body mass and brain size based on success in establishing breeding populations. The propensity for a parrot species to become established appears to be phylogenetically driven. Notably, parrots in the family Cacatuidae and Neotropical Pyrrhua appear to be poor at establishing themselves in the United States once released. Although brain size among Psittaciformes did not show a significant impact on successful breeding in the continental United States, we propose that the success of parrots can be attributed to their charismatic nature, significant intelligence relative to other avian lineages, and behavioral flexibility.

Geophagy, or soil ingestion, is known from a wide range of animal taxa but is particularly common among macaws and parrots in the family Psittacidae. Current theory suggests that Neotropical parrots ingest soil to neutralize toxins in food such as seeds and unripe fruit and as a mineral supplement. Here, we document the occurrence of geophagy at a site in lowland forest in Bolivia. We recorded six species of parrot with a maximum of 1,044 birds on any one day. Aratinga weddellii, Pionus menstruus and Ara severa (maxima of 654, 337 and 108 birds respectively) were the most numerous species visiting the site. We recommend that the Valle de la Luna be afforded formal protection by incorporating the site into the nearby Parque Nacional Carrasco.

Background and Research Aims: Habitat amount plays an important role in determining the presence and abundance of bird species in modified landscapes, whereas habitat fragmentation has shown little effects. Toucans (Ramphastidae) and parrots (Psittacidae) are large-bodied primary consumers and among the most representative birds in Neotropical forests. They are highly sensitive to habitat loss; nevertheless, their response to fragmentation has been poorly assessed leading to contradictory results. Here, we evaluate the influence of landscape structure on toucans and parrots in the tropical forest of Los Tuxtlas, Mexico. Methods: We censused birds in 12 landscapes of Los Tuxtlas and used a multi-scale landscape approach to assess the influence of landscape composition and configuration on the number of individuals of toucans and parrots. Results: We found that the most important and positive predictor of toucans and parrots was the amount of primary forest cover in the landscape. Forest fragmentation had positive effects on the number of toucan individuals, whereas parrots had negative responses to patch density but positive responses to edge density in the landscape. Conclusion: Our results suggest that primary forest loss is the main threat for toucans and parrots in Los Tuxtlas. Implications for conservation: Future conservation and land management must consider the protection of large and small remnants of primary forest and avoid additional forest loss in order to preserve toucan and parrots and their functional roles in human-modified Neotropical landscapes.

A key aspect in the conservation of endangered populations is understanding patterns of genetic variation and structure, which can provide managers with critical information to support evidence-based status assessments and management strategies. This is especially important for species with small wild and larger captive populations, as found in many endangered parrots. We used genotypic data to assess genetic variation and structure in wild and captive populations of two endangered parrots, the blue-throated macaw, Ara glaucogularis, of Bolivia, and the thick-billed parrot, Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha, of Mexico. In the blue-throated macaw, we found evidence of weak genetic differentiation between wild northern and southern subpopulations, and between wild and captive populations. In the thick-billed parrot we found no signal of differentiation between the Madera and Tutuaca breeding colonies or between wild and captive populations. Similar levels of genetic diversity were detected in the wild and captive populations of both species, with private alleles detected in captivity in both, and in the wild in the thick-billed parrot. We found genetic signatures of a bottleneck in the northern blue-throated macaw subpopulation, but no such signal was identified in any other subpopulation of either species. Our results suggest both species could potentially benefit from reintroduction of genetic variation found in captivity, and emphasize the need for genetic management of captive populations.

South America presents the greatest Psittacidae diversity in the world, but also has the highest numbers of threatened parrot species. Recently, exotic viruses have been detected in captive native psittacine birds in Brazil, however, their impacts on the health of wild parrots are still unknown. We evaluated the presence of Chlamydia psittaci, Psittacid alphaherpesvirus 1 (PsHV-1), avipoxvirus and beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) in wild Amazona aestiva, A. brasiliensis and A. pretrei nestlings and in wild caught A. aestiva nestlings seized from illegal trade. Samples were collected from 205 wild nestlings and 90 nestlings from illegal trade and pathogen-specific PCR was performed for each sample. Chlamydia DNA prevalence was 4.7% in A. aestiva and 2.5% in A. brasiliensis sampled from the wild. Sequencing revealed that the C. psittaci sample belonged to the genotype A. PsHV-1, avipoxvirus and BFDV DNA was not detected. These results have conservation implications since they suggest that wild parrot populations have a low prevalence of the selected pathogens and, apparently, they were not reached by the exotic BFDV. Stricter health protocols should be established as condition to reintroduction of birds to the wild to guarantee the protection of Neotropical parrots.

BackgroundUrbanization is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss worldwide. Wildlife responses to urbanization, however, are greatly variable and, paradoxically, some threatened species may achieve much larger populations in urban than in natural habitats. Urban conservation hotspots may therefore help some species avoid regional or even global extinctions, but not conserve their often overlooked ecological functions in the wild. We aim to draw attention to this issue using two species of globally threatened parrots occurring in the Dominican Republic: the Hispaniolan amazon (Amazona ventralis) and the Hispaniolan parakeet (Psittacara chloropterus).MethodsWe conducted a large-scale roadside survey in June 2017 across the country to estimate the relative abundance of parrots in natural habitats, rural habitats, and cities. We combined this with informal interviews with local people to collect information on past and current human impacts on parrot populations. We also looked for foraging parrots to assess their potential role as seed dispersers, an ecological function that has been overlooked until very recently.ResultsRelative abundances of both parrot species were negligible in rural areas and very low in natural habitats. They were generally between one and two orders of magnitude lower than that of congeneric species inhabiting other Neotropical ecosystems. Relative abundances were six times higher in cities than in natural habitats in the case of the Hispaniolan parakeet and three times higher in the case of the Hispaniolan amazon. People indicated hunting for a source food and to mitigate crop damage as causes of parrot population declines, and a vigorous illegal trade for parrots (131 individuals recorded, 75% of them poached very recently), mostly obtained from protected areas where the last small wild populations remain. We observed parrots foraging on 19 plant species from 11 families, dispersing the fruits of 14 species by carrying them in their beaks and consuming them in distant perching trees. They discarded undamaged mature seeds, with the potential to germinate, in 99.5% of cases (n= 306), and minimum dispersal distances ranged from 8 to 155 m (median = 37 m).DiscussionThe loss of ecological functions provided by some species when they disappear from natural habitats and only persist in cities may have long-term, unexpected effects on ecosystems. Our example demonstrates how two cities may soon be the last refuges for two endemic parrots if overharvesting continues, in which case their overlooked role as seed dispersers would be completely lost in nature. The functional extinction of these species could strongly affect vegetation communities in an island environment where seed-dispersal species are naturally scarce. While conservation plans must include urban populations of threatened species, greater efforts are needed to restore their populations in natural habitats to conserve ecological functions.

Similarities in brain size, life histories, psychology and behaviour in parrots, corvids and apes suggest that certain socio-ecological selection pressures may have driven the convergent evolution of cognition in these families. However, very little is known about parrot behaviour and cognition, outside of African greys and kea. Therefore, captive red-shouldered macaws (Diopsittaca nobilis) and black-headed caiques (Pionites melanocephala) were presented with a variety of tasks to assess their social and physical cognition and behavioural flexibility. Although these species possess many similarities in their life history and ecology, there are also substantial differences in their morphology and natural habitats that could have driven differences in their cognitive evolution. Observations of social and physical interactions in both species revealed that macaws engaged in high levels of affiliative behaviour, and object neophobia, whereas caiques displayed high levels of social play and object exploration. However, such differences did not appear to result in differences in their social or physical cognition. Macaws and caiques displayed comparable performances on Serial Reversal Learning tasks (as an index of behavioural flexibility). Both species also demonstrated similar performances on two Means-End transfer tasks and a series of innovative foraging tasks that were designed to assess their comprehension of object relationships. However, macaws and caiques appeared to solve such problems by generalising learned information across novel tasks. Overall, these findings suggest that these two species may approach certain socio-ecological problems using flexible cognition that may be generalised across different problems, supporting claims for a domain general intelligence.

O presente trabalho foi organizado em cinco capítulos. No primeiro é apresentada uma breve revisão da bibliografia relacionada ao DNA barcode, apontando as aplicações e os limites desse marcador. Os resultados obtidos são apresentados nos três capítulos subsequentes. O segundo capítulo teve como objetivo avaliar o potencial do método de DNA barcoding na distinção de 783 amostras de 228 espécies diferentes de aves neotropicais de 16 ordens baseado na diferença dos valores de divergências intra- e interespecíficas. O DNA barcode permitiu a diagnose da maioria das espécies tanto utilizando os valores de distância quanto os agrupamentos nas árvores de Neighbor-joining (NJ), mostrando ser um marcador muito útil na identificação rápida de aves neotropicais. Além disso, verificamos que ele gera informações que podem ser relevantes a estudos biogeográficos. Foram identificadas espécies proximamente relacionadas que não puderam ser identificadas seguindo essa metodologia, todas pertencentes aos psitaciformes. Assim, o objetivo do capítulo seguinte foi investigar se há caracteres diagnósticos no coxI de pares de espécies irmãs de psitacídeos neotropicais (gêneros Amazona, Ara, Aratinga, Brotogeris e Graydidascalus) e de grupos que não puderam ser identificados nas análises anteriores devido a baixas distâncias interespecíficas ou por não formarem clados reciprocamente monofiléticos nas árvores de NJ (espécies dos gêneros Amazona, Aratinga, Myiopsitta, Pionites, Pyrrhura e Rhynchopsitta). As espécies irmãs apresentaram de quatro a 39 sítios diagnósticos puros e as espécies proximamente relacionadas apresentaram de um a 11 sítios diagnósticos. Apenas as espécies Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha e R. terrisi e as espécies Amazona aestiva e A. ochrochephala, não apresentaram caracteres diagnósticos exclusivos e, portanto não puderam ser identificadas. Os resultados mostraram que é possível identificar grande parte das espécies proximamente relacionadas desse grupo de aves utilizando caracteres diagnósticos do DNA barcode. O penúltimo capítulo teve como objetivo identificar espécies de embriões de aves apreendidos do tráfico internacional de animais, utilizando o DNA barcode. Das 58 amostras totais, 93% foram identificadas, sendo três amostras de Ara ararauna, duas de Triclaria malachitacea e 49 de Alipiopsitta xanthops. As quatro amostras restantes (7%) foram identificadas como Amazona aestiva e/ou Amazona ochrochephala. Essas espécies formam um complexo já descrito em alguns trabalhos de filogenia molecular, o que inviabiliza qualquer sistema de identificação de espécies ao nível molecular. O DNA barcoding parece ser eficaz na correta identificação de espécies de aves e é especialmente útil em casos nos quais dados morfológicos não são acessíveis, como o presente exemplo. Por fim são descritas as principais conclusões de cada capítulo.<br>The present study was organized in five chapters. The first one is a brief review of the literature on DNA barcode, pointing out its applications and limits. The results are presented in the three subsequent chapters. The second chapter aimed to evaluate the potential of the DNA barcoding method in the distinction of 783 samples of 228 different Neotropical birds species from 16 orders, based on the difference of values of intra- and interspecific distances. DNA barcode was able to diagnose most of the species using distance values and Neighbor-joining (NJ) trees. Thus, it is a useful tool for rapid identification of Neotropical birds and it can provide information that may be relevant to biogeography studies. Some closely related species, all psitaciformes, could not be identified. Thus, the following chapter attempted to identify diagnostic characters in the DNA barcode sequences of sister species pairs of Neotropical parrots (genera Amazona, Ara, Aratinga, Brotogeris and Graydidascalus) and groups of species that could not be identified due to low interspecific distances or lack of monophyly in NJ trees (species of the genera Amazona, Aratinga, Myiopsitta, Pionites, Pyrrhura, Rhynchopsitta). The pairs of sister species had four to 39 pure diagnostic sites and closely related species had one to 11 diagnostic sites. Only the pair of species Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha and R. terrisi, and Amazona aestiva and A. ochrochephala did not have exclusive characters and therefore could not be identified with this method. The results showed that it is possible to identify the majority of the closely related species of this avian group using DNA barcode characters. The next chapter intended to identify the species of bird embryos apprehended from the illegal animal trade using DNA barcodes. From the total of 58 samples, 93% were identified as: three Ara ararauna, two Triclaria malachitacea and 49 Alipiopsitta xanthops. The four remaining samples (7%) were identified as Amazona aestiva and/or A. ochrochephala. These species form a complex that was already suggested in previous molecular phylogeny studies. Thus, it seems to be impossible to distinguish them based on molecular markers. DNA barcoding seems to be efficient in the identification of species of birds and is especially useful in cases where morphological data is not accessible, as the present example. Finally the main conclusions are described in the last chapter.

Abstract Approximately one-third of the 140 New World parrot species are considered at risk of extinction (Collar and Juniper 1992, Collar 1996, Snyder et al. 1999, BirdLife 2000). Venezuela is home to 14 genera and 49 species in the family Psittacidae, representing 35% of neotropical taxa (Desenne and Strahl 1991, 1994; Phelps and Meyer de Schauensee 1994). They occupy all habitat types in the country, from the dry scrub across the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts to the highland meadows (known locally as páramos) of the Andean cordillera in the west. Some 7 parrot taxa are considered nationally threatened, while 11 more are listed as facing a lower extinction risk (Rodríguez and Rojas-Suárez 1999).

This case study-based exercise is designed to foster the practice of critical thinking—a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues and evidence before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion—in the context of a complex and real conservation problem: the overexploitation of parrots in the Neotropics. The exercise has three parts: an introduction, a case study, and four exercise questions that promote critical consideration and strategic problem solving of a specific conservation issue.