| phoretic mites identified on andean hummingbirds (trochilidae) of caldas, colombia. | within the bird-plant-mite system, the relationship between hummingbirds, flowers, and mites remains poorly understood. in this study, we evaluated the degree of association between nasal mites and eight species of andean hummingbirds in colombia (amazilia saucerrottei, a. tzacatl, chalybura buffonii, chlorostilbon mellisugus, florisuga mellivora, glaucis hirsutus, phaethornis guy and p. striigularis). over a five-month period (trapping effort 360 hours/month), a total of 178 birds were captured ... | 2013 | 23856724 |
| different foraging preferences of hummingbirds on artificial and natural flowers reveal mechanisms structuring plant-pollinator interactions. | in plant-pollinator networks, the floral morphology of food plants is an important determinant of the interaction niche of pollinators. studies on foraging preferences of pollinators combining experimental and observational approaches may help to understand the mechanisms behind patterns of interactions and niche partitioning within pollinator communities. in this study, we tested whether morphological floral traits were associated with foraging preferences of hummingbirds for artificial and nat ... | 2015 | 25400277 |
| evolution of sexual dimorphism in bill size and shape of hermit hummingbirds (phaethornithinae): a role for ecological causation. | unambiguous examples of ecological causation of sexual dimorphism are rare, and the best evidence involves sexual differences in trophic morphology. we show that moderate female-biased sexual dimorphism in bill curvature is the ancestral condition in hermit hummingbirds (phaethornithinae), and that it is greatly amplified in species such as glaucis hirsutus and phaethornis guy, where bills of females are 60 per cent more curved than bills of males. in contrast, bill curvature dimorphism is lost ... | 2010 | 20194168 |
| tropical forest fragmentation limits movements, but not occurrence of a generalist pollinator species. | habitat loss and fragmentation influence species distributions and therefore ecological processes that depend upon them. pollination may be particularly susceptible to fragmentation, as it depends on frequent pollinator movement. unfortunately, most pollinators are too small to track efficiently which has precluded testing the hypothesis that habitat fragmentation reduces or eliminates pollen flow by disrupting pollinator movement. we used radio-telemetry to examine space use of the green hermit ... | 2016 | 27941984 |
| tropical deforestation alters hummingbird movement patterns. | reduced pollination success, as a function of habitat loss and fragmentation, appears to be a global phenomenon. disruption of pollinator movement is one hypothesis put forward to explain this pattern in pollen limitation. however, the small size of pollinators makes them very difficult to track; thus, knowledge of their movements is largely speculative. using tiny radio transmitters (0.25 g), we translocated a generalist tropical 'trap-lining' hummingbird, the green hermit (phaethornis guy), ac ... | 2009 | 19158031 |
| functional connectivity experiments reflect routine movement behavior of a tropical hummingbird species. | translocation experiments, in which researchers displace animals and then monitor their movements to return home, are commonly used as tools to assess functional connectivity of fragmented landscapes. such experiments are purported to have important advantages of being time efficient and of standardizing “motivation” to move across individuals. yet, we lack tests of whether movement behavior of translocated birds reflects natural behavior of unmanipulated birds. we compared the routine movement ... | 2019 | 29188685 |