Birds foraging for fruits and insects in shrubby restinga vegetation, southeastern Brazil

Understanding how birds use vegetation to obtain food resources has implications for habitat conservation and management. Restinga is a poorly known and threatened tropical habitat, associated to the Atlantic forest, that could benefit from this kind of information to know which plants can be used and dispersed by birds that can help on the maintenance of this habitat. Frugivorous and insectivorous birds are important components of tropical ecosystems, such as restinga. To provide more information regarding the ecology of restinga, we studied the feeding behavior and spatial use of this vegetation by birds at Restinga de Jurubatiba National Park, southeastern Brazil. We found that feeding behavior was similar to that recorded for the same species in other vegetation types. In addition, spatial use of the restinga vegetation by the most abundant species did not overlap greatly, except for two insectivorous species that used different foraging maneuvers and two frugivorous birds that foraged in flocks. The two most abundant species were generalists in their diet and were capable of feeding at the ground level on sand substrate.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Gomes,Verônica Souza da Mota, Loiselle,Bette A., Alves,Maria Alice S.
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	Instituto Virtual da Biodiversidade | BIOTA - FAPESP 2008
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1676-06032008000400001
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