Severe declines of ant-following birds in African rainforest fragments are facilitated by a subtle change in army ant communities

Biological Conservation

Volumn 142, Issue 10, 2009, Pages 2050-2058

  Peters, Marcell K ^a   Okalo, Benjamin ^b  

^a ZOOLOGISCHES FORSCHUNGSMUSEUM ALEXANDER KOENIG   (Germany)

^b Kakamega Environmental Education Program   (Kenya)

Author keywords

Alethe poliocephala; Antbirds; Bleda syndactyla; Driver ants; Land use change; Neocossyphus poensis

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; ANT; ANTHROPOGENIC EFFECT; BIRD; COMMUNITY RESPONSE; ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS; FOOD LIMITATION; HABITAT FRAGMENTATION; HUMIDITY; LAND USE CHANGE; PERSISTENCE; POPULATION DECLINE; RAINFOREST;

AFRICA; EAST AFRICA; KENYA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

ALETHE POLIOCEPHALA; ANIMALIA; AVES; BLEDA SYNDACTYLA; DORYLUS MOLESTUS; DORYLUS WILVERTHI; FORMICIDAE; NEOCOSSYPHUS POENSIS;

EID: 68349145955     PISSN: 00063207     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.03.035     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Barlow J., Peres C.A., Henriques L.M.P., Stouffer P.C., and Wunderle J.M. The responses of understorey birds to forest fragmentation, logging and wildfires: an Amazonian synthesis. Biological Conservation 128 (2006) 182-192
2. Beier P., Van Drielen M., and Kankam B.O. Avifaunal collapse in West African forest fragments. Conservation Biology 16 (2002) 1097-1111
3. Belsley D.A., Kuh E., and Welsch R.E. Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity (1980), John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA
4. Bleher B., Uster D., and Bergsdorf T. Assessment of threat status and management effectiveness in Kakamega forest, Kenya. Biodiversity and Conservation 15 (2006) 1159-1177
5. Boswell G.P., Britton N.F., and Franks N.R. Habitat fragmentation, percolation theory and the conservation of a keystone species. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B - Biological Sciences 265 (1998) 1921-1925
6. Brooks T.M., Pimm S.L., and Oyugi J.O. Time lag between deforestation and bird extinction in tropical forest fragments. Conservation Biology 13 (1999) 1140-1150
7. Brown D.R., and Sherry T.W. Food supply controls the body condition of a migrant bird wintering in the tropics. Oecologia 149 (2006) 22-32
8. Chaves-Campos J. Localization of army-ant swarms by ant-following birds on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica: following the vocalization of antbirds to find the swarms. Ornitología Neotropical 14 (2003) 289-294
9. Chaves-Campos, J., 2008. Benefits of cooperative food search in the maintenance of group living in ocellated antbirds. Ph.D. Thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
10. Conroy M.J., Cohen Y., James F.C., Matsinos Y.G., and Maurer B.A. Parameter-estimation, reliability, and model improvement for spatially explicit models of animal populations. Ecological Applications 5 (1995) 17-19
11. Crawley M.J. Statistics. An Introduction Using R (2005), John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex
12. Dowsett-Lemaire F. Ecological and territorial requirements of montane forest birds on the Nyika plateau, south-central Africa. Le Gerfaut 73 (1983) 345-378
13. Ellison A.M. Bayesian inference in ecology. Ecology Letters 7 (2004) 509-520
14. Farwig N., Sajita N., and Böhning-Gaese K. Conservation value of forest plantations for bird communities in western Kenya. Forest Ecology and Management 255 (2008) 3885-3892
15. Ferraz G., Nichols J.D., Hines J.E., Stouffer P.C., Bierregaard R.O., and Lovejoy T.E. A large-scale deforestation experiment: effects of patch area and isolation on Amazon birds. Science 315 (2007) 238-241
16. Franks N.R. A new method for censusing animal populations: the number of Eciton burchelli army ant colonies on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Oecologia 52 (1982) 266-268
17. Franks N.R. Ecology and population regulation in the army ant Eciton burchelli. In: Leigh E.G., Rand A.S., and Windsor D.M. (Eds). The Ecology of a Tropical Forest: Seasonal Rhythms and Longer-term Changes (1982), Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA 389-395
18. Frith D., and Frith C. Seasonality of litter invertebrate populations in an Australian upland tropical rain forest. Biotropica 22 (1990) 181-190
19. Gaston K.J., and Fuller R.A. Commonness, population depletion and conservation biology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23 (2008) 14-19
20. Gotwald W.H. Army Ants: The Biology of Social Predation (1995), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, USA
21. Harper L.H. The persistence of ant-following birds in small forest fragments. Acta Amazonica 19 (1989) 249-263
22. Johnson J.B., and Omland K.S. Model selection in ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19 (2003) 101-108
23. Johnson M.D., Sherry T.W., Holmes R.T., and Marra P.P. Assessing habitat quality for a migratory songbird wintering in natural and agricultural habitats. Conservation Biology 20 (2006) 1433-1444
24. Keith S., Urban E.K., and Hillary Fry C. The Birds of Africa Vol. IV (1992), Academic Press, London, UK
25. Laurance S.G.W., Stouffer P.C., and Laurance W.F. Effects of road clearings on movement patterns of understory rainforest birds in Central Amazonia. Conservation Biology 18 (2004) 1099-1109
26. Leroux J.-M. Ecolgie des populations de Dorylines Anomma nigricans Illiger (Hym. Formicidae) dans la région de Lampto (Côte d'Ivoire) (1982), Laboratoire de Zoologie, Paris, France
27. Levings S.C., and Windsor D.M. Seasonal and annual variation in litter arthropod populations. In: Leigh E.G., Rand A.S., and Windsor D.M. (Eds). The Ecology of a Tropical Forest: Seasonal Rhythms and Longer-term Changes (1982), Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA 355-387
28. Levings S.C., and Windsor D.M. Litter moisture content as a determinant of litter arthropod distribution and abundance during the dry season on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Biotropica 16 (1984) 125-131
29. Kumar A., and O'Donnell S. Fragmentation and elevation effects on bird-army ant interactions in neotropical montane forest of Costa Rica. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23 (2007) 581-590
30. Mammides C., Cords M., and Peters M.K. Effects of habitat disturbance and food supply on population densities of three primate species in the Kakamega Forest, Kenya. African Journal of Ecology 47 (2008) 87-96
31. Meisel, J.E., 2004. The influence of microclimate and habitat area on the ecology of the army ant Eciton burchellii in tropical forest fragments. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
32. Newmark W.D. Tropical forest fragmentation and the local extinction of understory birds in the Eastern Usambara Mountains, Tanzania. Conservation Biology 5 (1991) 67-78
33. O'Donnell S., Lattke J., Powell S., and Kaspari M. Army ants in four forests: geographic variation in raid rates and species composition. Journal of Animal Ecology 76 (2007) 580-589
34. Partridge L.W., Britton N.F., and Franks N.R. Army ant population dynamics: the effects of habitat quality and reserve size on population size and time to extinction. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B - Biological Sciences 263 (1996) 735-741
35. Peters M.K., Fischer G., Schaab G., and Kraemer M. Species compensation maintains abundance and raid rates of African swarm-raiding army ants in rainforest fragments. Biological Conservation 668 (2009) 675
36. Peters M.K., Likare S., and Kraemer M. Effects of habitat fragmentation and degradation on flocks of African ant-following birds. Ecological Applications 18 (2008) 847-858
37. Raftery A.E., Madigan D., and Hoeting J.A. Bayesian model averaging for linear regression models. Journal of the American Statistical Association 92 (1997) 179-191
38. Raftery A.E., Painter I.S., and Volinsky C.T. BMA: an R package for Bayesian model averaging. R News 5 2 (2005) 2-8
39. R Development Core Team, 2006. R: A Language And Environment For Statistical Computing, Version 2.3.1. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
40. Schöning C., Kinuthia W., and Boomsma J.J. Does the afrotropical army ant Dorylus (Anomma) molestus go extinct in fragmented forests?. Journal of East African Natural History 95 (2006) 163-179
41. Schöning C., Njagi W.M., and Franks N.R. Temporal and spatial patterns in the emigrations of the army ant Dorylus (Anomma) molestus in the montane forest of Mt. Kenya. Ecological Entomology 30 (2005) 532-540
42. Sekercioglu C.H. Increasing awareness of avian ecological function. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21 (2006) 464-471
43. Sekercioglu C.H. Conservation ecology: area trumps mobility in fragment bird extinctions. Current Biology 17 (2007) R283-R286
44. Sekercioglu C.H., Ehrlich P.R., Daily G.C., Aygen D., Goehring D., and Sandi R.F. Disappearance of insectivorous birds from tropical forest fragments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99 (2002) 263-267
45. Sodhi N.S., Liow L.H., and Bazzaz F.A. Avian extinctions from tropical and subtropical forests. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 35 (2004) 323-345
46. Stouffer P.C., and Bierregaard R.O. Use of Amazonian forest fragments by understory insectivorous birds. Ecology 76 (1995) 2429-2445
47. Strong A.M., and Sherry T.W. Habitat-specific effects of food abundance on the condition of ovenbirds wintering in Jamaica. Journal of Animal Ecology 69 (2000) 883-895
48. Swartz M.B. Bivouac checking, a novel behavior distinguishing obligate from opportunistic species of army-ant-following birds. The Condor 103 (2001) 629-633
49. Terborgh J., Lopez L., Tello J., Yu D., and Bruni A.R. Transitory states in relaxing ecosystems of tropical land-bridge islands. In: Laurance W.F., and Bierregaard R.O. (Eds). Tropical Forest Remnants: Ecology, Management and Conservation of Fragmented Communities (1997), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA 256-274
50. Van Houtan K.S., Pimm S.L., Hallay J.M., Bierrregaard R.O., and Lovejoy T.E. Dispersal of Amazonian birds in continuous and fragmented forest. Ecology Letters 10 (2007) 219-229
51. Venables W.N., and Ripley B.D. Modern Applied Statistics with S. fourth ed. (2002), Springer, New York, USA
52. Vidal-Riggs J.M., and Chaves-Campos J. Method review: estimation of colony densities of the army ant Eciton burchellii. Biotropica 40 (2008) 259-262
53. Wagner P., Köhler J., Schmitz A., and Böhme W. The biogeographical assignment of a west Kenyan rain forest remnant: further evidence from analysis of its reptile fauna. Journal of Biogeography 35 (2008) 1349-1361
54. Waltert M., Bobo K.S., Sainge N.M., Fermon H., and Mühlenberg M. From forest to farmland: habitat effects on Afrotropical forest bird diversity. Ecological Applications 15 (2005) 1351-1366
55. Willis E.O. East African Turdidae as safari ant followers. Le Gerfaut 75 (1985) 140-153
56. Willis E.O. West African thrushes as safari ant followers. Le Gerfaut 76 (1986) 95-108
57. Willis E.O., and Oniki Y. Birds and army ants. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 9 (1978) 243-263
58. Willson S.K. Obligate army-ant-following birds: a study of ecology, spatial movement patterns, and behavior in Amazonian Peru. Ornithological Monographs 55 (2004) 1-67
59. Wintle B.A., McCarthy M.A., Volinsky C.T., and Kavanagh R.P. The use of Bayesian model averaging to better represent uncertainty in ecological models. Conservation Biology 17 (2003) 1579-1590
60. Wood S.N. Generalized Additive Models. An Introduction with R (2006), Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, USA