Long-term avifaunal survey in an urban ecosystem from southeastern Brazil, with comments on range extensions, new and disappearing species

• Autor(a) principal: Peixoto, Helberth José Cardoso
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Vasconcelos, Marcelo Ferreira de, Dutra, Eduardo de Carvalho, Mazzoni, Luiz Gabriel, Pedroso, Letícia Ferreira, Perillo, Alyne, Valério, Fernando Augusto, Guerra, Tadeu, Petrocchi, Diego, Morais, Rodrigo, Santos, Lucas Penna Soares, Garzon, Bruno, Dias, Juan Espanha Moreira, Santos, José Enemir dos, Morais, Allan Suhett de, Guimarães, Letícia Souza Lima, Garcia, Frederico Innecco Alves, et al.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0031-10492013002500001; http://www.locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/16789
• topic: Avifauna; Colonization; Disappearing species; Urban environment

Urban avifaunal surveys in Brazil have been increasing in recent years, despite none of them consisting of long-term studies indicating events of regional colonization and/or missing species. Here, we present an avifaunal survey of an urbanized ecosystem in southeastern Brazil, carried out along 30 years, on the campus of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, municipality of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state. Inside the campus there is a forest reserve adjacent to a small lake. The inventory was mainly based on opportunistic records from the years 1982-2013. We recorded 134 bird species along the past 30 years. However, the present avifauna is composed of 123 species. A total of 97 species was recorded in the reserve, including the forest fragment and the adjacent lake, of which 44 were exclusive to this area. Nevertheless, the majority of the current species found in the study area is forest independent (N = 51) or semi-dependent (N = 46). There is a predominance of insectivorous (N = 43) and omnivorous (N = 29) species. The current avifauna is represented by 15 migratory species, which can be found both in the urbanized area and in the forest remnant. However, the majority of the species (N = 75) is resident in the area, including three invasive species, whereas few others (N = 28) are occasional visitors. The remaining species were probably introduced in the area. There were 11 cases of disappearing species, which include typical forest birds, and also species typical of wetlands and rural environments. We also comment on recent colonization and on the possible effects of isolation on birds. Probably, the majority of forest-dependents are on the brink of extinction in the forest fragment. Thus, the species' list provided here can be useful as a database for monitoring long-term effects of urbanization on this bird community.