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Article: Home range and habitat preferences of the Banded Ground-cuckoo (Neomorphus radiolosus).(Short Communications)(Report)
- Article from:
- The Wilson Journal of Ornithology
- Article date:
- March 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Wilson Ornithological Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ground-cuckoos (Neomorphus: Cuculidae) are terrestrial, rain-forest-dwelling birds distributed across the Neotropics (Haffer 1977, Payne 1997). They forage on insects, small vertebrates, and fruit often while associating with army ants (Eciton sp.), Tayassu peccaries, or Saimiri, Cebus, and Saguinas primates (Sick 1949, Willis and Oniki 1978, Willis 1982, Terborgh 1983, Siegal et al. 1989). Biparental care has been reported for one species (Karubian et al. 2007), and none is thought to be a brood parasite (Sick 1949, Haffer 1977, Roth 1981, Payne 1997). Little else is known about any of the four species of Neomorphus, which replace each other geographically.
The ...
<20 m. We recorded only one fix per day to ensure independence of points. We recorded 53 fixes, 22 (42%) after observing the bird and 31 (58%) after hearing it. We recorded a single fix at each of two nests but suspended radio tracking during nesting to minimize disturbance. We recorded UTM coordinates at each fix using a Garmin GPS and plotted the coordinates using the Animal Movement Analysis extension in ArcView Geographical Information System (Hooge and Eichenlaub 2000). Fixes were visualized as minimum convex polygons (MCP's) (Mohr 1947), and 95% and 50% fixed kernel isopleths using least-squares cross validation (Worton 1989, Seamann and Powell 1996). MCPs are included despite their inherent biases (Powell 2000) to allow comparison with other studies. We recorded the presence or absence of army ants and mammals at radio points and opportunistically recorded social behavior and foraging. We assessed habitat characteristics at 48 fixes using 10-m radius circular plots which were compared to 10-m radius circular control plots of known history (primary forest, selectively-logged forest, and secondary forest regenerating 12-20 years). We estimated canopy height and number of trees in the genera Cecropia (Cecropiaceae) and Miconia (Melastomataceae) in each circular plot. Both are pioneer tree species that can be used as an index of habitat disturbance. We counted number of trees with a diameter at breast height (dbh)>