Abstract
Detailed studies on the home range size and habitat use of a species are important for the understanding of population dynamics and density. The Southern Streaked Flycatcher (Myiodynastes maculatus solitarius) is a common, widely distributed austral migrant in Brazil that inhabits open areas, forest edges and urban parks. Surprisingly, very little information exists on even basic aspects of its natural history, and details about its habitat use and home range are essentially unknown. We estimated home range size and habitat selection by M. m. solitarius during the 2017–2018 breeding season at Parque Ecológico do Tietê, an urban park in São Paulo, Brazil. We mist-netted and banded three adult individuals, which were followed for a total of 91 h and 50 min to assess their habitat use and home range. Home range size was 5.40 ± 2.45 ha (95% kernel density) and 2.46 ± 1.70 ha (50% kernel density). We obtained 428 sight records of the three individuals, and the strata most frequently used were the canopy and mid-story, in some places with a relatively high percentage of tree cover. These individuals had a clear preference for forested areas (n = 408), as compared to isolated trees in open areas (n = 20). This study contributes to enhance our knowledge of the natural history of the species and offers important new data on various aspects related to the use of space. These results also suggest that urban green areas promote the occurrence of this species in cities, using urban parks to breed and as stopover sites during migration.
Highlights
The urbanization process may affect migratory bird species in many different ways, since they use different sites through the year for wintering, stopover and breeding (Martin & Finch 1995, Lees & Martin 2015)
These results suggest that urban green areas promote the occurrence of this species in cities, using urban parks to breed and as stopover sites during migration
Home range size varied between months for all individuals, it was different for each individual (Table 2)
Summary
The urbanization process may affect migratory bird species in many different ways, since they use different sites through the year for wintering, stopover and breeding (Martin & Finch 1995, Lees & Martin 2015). Annual variation in urban food resource availability may favor the permanence of resident species and negatively affect migratory species, due to interspecific competition for food and nesting sites (Leveau 2018). For this reason, the structure of urban green areas and heterogeneity of the urban matrix may influence a variety of natural history traits of these species, such as habitat use and home range size. Resource availability for birds in disturbed habitats can be diminished, affecting intraspecific competition (Greenberg 1986), nest predation (Rodewald et al 2011) and food availability (Kohut et al 2009)
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