The widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides in recent years has led to increasing environmental concern, including impacts to avian populations. In Texas and across their range, Northern ...bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) habitat frequently overlaps cultivated cropland protected by neonicotinoids. To address the effects of neonicotinoid use on bobwhites in Texas, we conducted a historical analysis from 1978-2012 in Texas' ecological regions using quail count data collected from North American Breeding Bird Survey and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and neonicotinoid use data from the U.S. Geological Survey. We considered bobwhite abundance, neonicotinoid use, climate, and land-use variables in our analysis. Neonicotinoid use was significantly (p<0.05) negatively associated with bobwhite abundance in the High Plains, Rolling Plains, Gulf Coast Prairies & Marshes, Edwards Plateau, and South Texas Plains ecological regions in the time periods following neonicotinoid introduction (1994-2003) or after their widespread use (2004-2012). Our analyses suggest that the use of neonicotinoid insecticides may negatively affect bobwhite populations in crop-producing regions of Texas.
The northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) is an ecologically and economically important avian species. At the present time, little is known about the microbial communities associated with these ...birds. As the first step to create a quail microbiology knowledge base, the current study conducted an inventory of cultivable quail tracheal, crop, cecal, and cloacal microbiota and associated antimicrobial resistance using a combined bacteriology and DNA sequencing approach. A total of 414 morphologically unique bacterial colonies were selected from nonselective aerobic and anaerobic cultures, as well as selective and enrichment cultures. Analysis of the first 500-bp 16S rRNA gene sequences in conjunction with biochemical identifications revealed 190 non-redundant species-level taxonomic units, representing 160 known bacterial species and 30 novel species. The bacterial species were classified into 4 phyla, 14 orders, 37 families, and 59 or more genera. Firmicutes was the most commonly encountered phylum (57%) followed by Actinobacteria (24%), Proteobacteria (17%) and Bacteroidetes (0.02%). Extensive diversity in the species composition of quail microbiota was observed among individual birds and anatomical locations. Quail microbiota harbored several opportunistic pathogens, such as E. coli and Ps. aeruginosa, as well as human commensal organisms, including Neisseria species. Phenotypic characterization of selected bacterial species demonstrated a high prevalence of resistance to the following classes of antimicrobials: phenicol, macrolide, lincosamide, quinolone, and sulphate. Data from the current investigation warrant further investigation on the source, transmission, pathology, and control of antimicrobial resistance in wild quail populations.
Animals gathered around a specific location or resource may represent mixed-species aggregations or mixed-species groups. Patterns of individuals choosing to join these groups can provide insight ...into the information processing underlying these decisions. However, we still have little understanding of how much information these decisions are based upon. We used data on 12 parrot species to test what kind of information each species may use about others to make decisions about which mixed-species aggregations to participate in. We used co-presence and joining patterns with categorization and model fitting methods to test how these species could be making grouping decisions. Species generally used a simpler lower-category method to choose which other individuals to associate with, rather than basing these decisions on species-level information. We also found that the best-fit models for decision-making differed across the 12 species and included different kinds of information. We found that not only does this approach provide a framework to test hypotheses about why individuals join or leave mixed-species aggregations, it also provides insight into what features each parrot could have been using to make their decisions. While not exhaustive, this approach provides a novel examination of the potential features that species could use to make grouping decisions and could provide a link to the perceptive and cognitive abilities of the animals making these minute-by-minute decisions. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mixed-species groups and aggregations: shaping ecological and behavioural patterns and processes'.
Study of animal movements is key for understanding their ecology and facilitating their conservation. The Argos satellite system is a valuable tool for tracking species which move long distances, ...inhabit remote areas, and are otherwise difficult to track with traditional VHF telemetry and are not suitable for GPS systems. Previous research has raised doubts about the magnitude of position errors quoted by the satellite service provider CLS. In addition, no peer-reviewed publications have evaluated the usefulness of the CLS supplied error ellipses nor the accuracy of the new Kalman filtering (KF) processing method. Using transmitters hung from towers and trees in southeastern Peru, we show the Argos error ellipses generally contain <25% of the true locations and therefore do not adequately describe the true location errors. We also find that KF processing does not significantly increase location accuracy. The errors for both LS and KF processing methods were found to be lognormally distributed, which has important repercussions for error calculation, statistical analysis, and data interpretation. In brief, "good" positions (location codes 3, 2, 1, A) are accurate to about 2 km, while 0 and B locations are accurate to about 5-10 km. However, due to the lognormal distribution of the errors, larger outliers are to be expected in all location codes and need to be accounted for in the user's data processing. We evaluate five different empirical error estimates and find that 68% lognormal error ellipses provided the most useful error estimates. Longitude errors are larger than latitude errors by a factor of 2 to 3, supporting the use of elliptical error ellipses. Numerous studies over the past 15 years have also found fault with the CLS-claimed error estimates yet CLS has failed to correct their misleading information. We hope this will be reversed in the near future.
Texas Rio Grande Valley Red-crowned Parrots (Psittaciformes: Amazona viridigenalis Cassin, 1853) primarily occupy vegetated urban rather than natural areas. We investigated the utility of raw ...vegetation indices and their derivatives as well as elevation in modelling the Red-crowned parrot's general use, nest site, and roost site habitat distributions. A feature selection algorithm was employed to create and select an ensemble of fine-scale, top-ranked MaxEnt models from optimally-sized, decorrelated subsets of four to seven of 199 potential variables. Variables were ranked post hoc by frequency of appearance and mean permutation importance in top-ranked models. Our ensemble models accurately predicted the three distributions of interest (Formula: see text Area Under the Curve AUC = 0.904-0.969). Top-ranked variables for different habitat distribution models included: (a) general use-percent cover of preferred ranges of entropy texture of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values, entropy and contrast textures of NDVI, and elevation; (b) nest site-entropy textures of NDVI and Green-Blue NDVI, and percent cover of preferred range of entropy texture of NDVI values; (c) roost site-percent cover of preferred ranges of entropy texture of NDVI values, contrast texture of NDVI, and entropy texture of Green-Red Normalized Difference Index. Texas Rio Grande Valley Red-crowned Parrot presence was associated with urban areas with high heterogeneity and randomness in the distribution of vegetation and/or its characteristics (e.g., arrangement, type, structure). Maintaining existing preferred vegetation types and incorporating them into new developments should support the persistence of Red-crowned Parrots in southern Texas.
Funding for basic conservation research is chronically lacking. The potential for ecotourism to fund conservation research exists, but has been little explored. One branch of ecotourism with funding ...potential is volunteer tourism, where conservation scientists and recruiting agencies develop research projects and volunteers provide funding and labor. We examine the costs and benefits of a three-way partnership among a conservation research project (The Tambopata Macaw Project), an ecotourism operator (Rainforest Expeditions), and a volunteer-recruiting NGO (the Earthwatch Institute). From November 1999 to December 2006, Macaw Project researchers invested about 1700
h in giving research presentations and interacting with ecotourists and received from Rainforest Expeditions ∼$278,000 worth of salaries, transportation, food, and lodging (total cost to Rainforest Expeditions ∼$98,000). Since 2001, researchers invested 2300
h in training and supervising volunteers and related activities and received from Earthwatch 328 volunteers, ∼13 000
h of volunteer labor and $115,000 in research funding. Rainforest Expeditions received $175,000 in fees from Earthwatch for food and lodging for volunteers. In this association, all parties benefited financially: the research received >$400,000 in cash, goods and services, Earthwatch retained $387,000 in volunteer fees, and Rainforest Expeditions received nearly $300,000 in gross income. Additional benefits to Rainforest Expeditions included services for their guests and free marketing through research related publications and word of mouth. We discuss ways to structure projects to maximize the benefits and the potential of this model for funding other long-term conservation research projects.
Wild populations of northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus; hereafter bobwhite) have declined across nearly all of their U.S. range, and despite their importance as an experimental wildlife model ...for ecotoxicology studies, no bobwhite draft genome assembly currently exists. Herein, we present a bobwhite draft de novo genome assembly with annotation, comparative analyses including genome-wide analyses of divergence with the chicken (Gallus gallus) and zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) genomes, and coalescent modeling to reconstruct the demographic history of the bobwhite for comparison to other birds currently in decline (i.e., scarlet macaw; Ara macao). More than 90% of the assembled bobwhite genome was captured within <40,000 final scaffolds (N50 = 45.4 Kb) despite evidence for approximately 3.22 heterozygous polymorphisms per Kb, and three annotation analyses produced evidence for >14,000 unique genes and proteins. Bobwhite analyses of divergence with the chicken and zebra finch genomes revealed many extremely conserved gene sequences, and evidence for lineage-specific divergence of noncoding regions. Coalescent models for reconstructing the demographic history of the bobwhite and the scarlet macaw provided evidence for population bottlenecks which were temporally coincident with human colonization of the New World, the late Pleistocene collapse of the megafauna, and the last glacial maximum. Demographic trends predicted for the bobwhite and the scarlet macaw also were concordant with how opposing natural selection strategies (i.e., skewness in the r-/K-selection continuum) would be expected to shape genome diversity and the effective population sizes in these species, which is directly relevant to future conservation efforts.
Many species of plants and animals thrive in urban habitats and stand to gain from the global trend in increased urbanization. One such species, the Red-crowned Parrot (Amazona viridigenalis), is ...endangered within its native range but seems to thrive in urban landscapes. While populations of endangered synanthropic species may be uncommon, they can act as genetic reservoirs and present us with unique conservation and research opportunities. We sought to determine the red-crowned parrot’s level of dependency on urban areas, as well as the climatic and anthropogenic drivers of their distribution throughout the United States. We built national level species distribution models for the USA using Maxent and correlated presence points derived from field work and citizen science databases to environmental variables for three Red-crowned Parrot populations: two naturalized (California and Florida) and one native (Texas). We found current occupancy to be 18,965 km2 throughout the three states. These three states also contained 39,429 km2 of high- and medium-quality habitats, which, if occupied, would represent a substantial increase in the species range. Suitable habitat showed a strong positive correlation with urbanization in areas where average monthly temperatures were at least 5 °C. The current and predicted distributions of Red-crowned Parrots were closely aligned with urban boundaries. We expected populations of Red-crowned Parrots and other synanthropic species to grow due to a combination of factors, namely, continued urbanization and the effects of climate change, which increase the size and connectivity of a suitable habitat. For some imperiled species, urban habitats could prove to be important bastions for their conservation.
Parrots (Psittaciformes) are among the most threatened bird orders with 28 % (111 of 398) of extant species classified as threatened under IUCN criteria. We confirmed that parrots have a lower Red ...List Index (higher aggregate extinction risk) than other comparable bird groups, and modeled the factors associated with extinction risk. Our analyses included intrinsic biological, life history and ecological attributes, external anthropogenic threats, and socio-economic variables associated with the countries where the parrot species occur, while we controlled for phylogenetic dependence among species. We found that the likelihood of parrot species being classified as threatened was less for species with larger historical distribution size, but was greater for species with high forest dependency, large body size, long generation time, and greater proportion of the human population living in urban areas in the countries encompassing the parrots’ home ranges. The severity of extinction risk (from vulnerable to critically endangered) was positively related to the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the countries of occurrence, endemism to a single country, and lower for species used as pets. A disproportionate number of 16 extinct parrot species were endemic to islands and single countries, and were large bodied, habitat specialists. Agriculture, hunting, trapping, and logging are the most frequent threats to parrots worldwide, with variation in importance among regions. We use multiple methods to rank countries with disproportionately high numbers of threatened parrot species. Our results promote understanding of global and regional factors associated with endangerment in this highly threatened taxonomic group, and will enhance the prioritization of conservation actions.
The release of captive-raised parrots to create or supplement wild populations has been critiqued due to variable survival rates and unreliable flocking behavior. Private bird owners free-fly their ...parrots in outdoor environments and utilize techniques that could address the needs of conservation breed and release projects. We present methods and results of a free-flight training technique used for 3 parrot flocks: A large-bodied (8 macaws of 3 species and 2 hybrids), small-bodied (25 individuals of 4 species), and a Sun Parakeet flock (4 individuals of 1 species). Obtained as chicks, the birds were hand-reared in an enriched environment. As juveniles, the birds were systematically exposed to increasingly complex wildland environments, mirroring the learning process of wild birds developing skills. The criteria we evaluated for each flock were predation rates, antipredator behavior, landscape navigation, and foraging. No parrots were lost to predation or disorientation during over 500 months of free-flight time, and all birds demonstrated effective flocking, desirable landscape navigation, and wild food usage. The authors conclude that this free-flight method may be directly applicable for conservation releases, similar to the use of falconry methods for raptor conservation.
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