Record Details
Movement and space use by the green hermit (Phaethornis guy) in a fragmented landscape in Costa Rica
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Movement and space use by the green hermit (Phaethornis guy) in a fragmented landscape in Costa Rica |
| Names |
Volpe, Noelia L.
(creator) Robinson, W. Douglas (advisor) Betts, Matthew G. (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 2014-03-19 (iso8601) |
| Note | Graduation date: 2014 |
| Abstract | Human activities have altered Earth’s ecosystems. Most biomes have experienced a 20-50% conversion to human use. Loss of habitat has obvious effects on the persistence of species. Fragmentation, however, may also negatively affect biodiversity for those species that exhibit behavioral responses to changes in habitat configuration. Such behavioral changes include movement, which is influenced by subdividing and isolating habitats through which animals prefer to travel. Ecosystem services that depend on the ability of animals to move through the landscape could be affected by changes in habitat configuration. Pollination is one such process because access of pollinators to flowers is often the key determinant of plant reproductive success. Yet, relatively little is known about how forest fragmentation may influence the flow of pollen carried by forest-dwelling pollinators, such as hummingbirds. I evaluate how changes in the distribution of pollinators produced by habitat fragmentation in southern Costa Rica affects a pollination web occupied by a generalist tropical pollinator, the green hermit hummingbird (Phaethornis guy). I used radio-telemetry to measure patterns of space use by green hermits living in forested areas with different levels of fragmentation. I first characterize patterns of space use by green hermits at three scales: point, path and home range. I found that green hermits have marked preference for locations in forested areas with high density of Heliconia plants and canopy cover; prefer paths close to streams that minimize crossing large stretches of non-forested matrix; and establish their home ranges in areas with high forest amount. In addition, home range area was negatively related to the amount of forest within it and positively related to fragmentation per se. Average resource density within the home range appeared to be unrelated to the area covered by the green hermits. My observations indicate that while the presence of green hermits in an area is mainly determined by the amount of forest available, the way they move through a landscape will be strongly affected by habitat configuration. In this context, pollen transfer by green hermits will be limited by the presence of open, non-forested areas owing to matrix avoidance. In landscapes with small discontinuous patches, the total area covered by an individual green hermit is likely to be small so I hypothesize that the genetic variability of pollen it transports may be diminished. I also assess the effectiveness of a tool commonly used to study the effect of habitat fragmentation on animal movement: translocation experiments. Such experiments are purported to have important advantages of being time efficient and standardizing across individuals the ‘motivation’ to move. Yet, we lack tests of whether movement behavior of translocated birds reflects natural behavior of unmanipulated birds. I compared the routine movement behavior of green hermits to that of experimentally translocated individuals. Behaviors documented during translocation experiments reflected those observed during routine movements. Both translocated and non-translocated birds showed similar levels of preference for mature tropical forest at the point level and avoided moving across non-forested matrix while selecting streams as movement corridors at the path level. Movement rates (distance covered per unit time) were generally higher during translocation experiments. However, the negative influence of forest cover on movement rates was proportionately similar in translocation and routine movement treatments. My results show that movement behavior of birds during translocation experiments is similar to natural movement behavior of birds. Therefore, translocation experiments may be reliable tools to address effects of landscape structure on animal movement. |
| Genre | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Access Condition | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ |
| Topic | hummingbird |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/46950 |
