Mamma Knows Best: Why a Generalist Hummingbird Selects the Less Abundant Moss for Nest Building

Abstract

Birds commonly use plant materials for nest building. However, how selective they are in this process, and why birds select some plants over others remains little explored. The generalist hummingbird Sephanoides sephaniodes (the primary vertebrate pollinator of the South American temperate rainforests) uses many moss species for nest building, but most of the nest biomass comes from a little-abundant moss. We conducted chemical and microbiological tests to understand why this species moss is selected over other highly abundant ones. Ancistrodes genuflexa, the little-abundant moss, presented many organic compounds that give it active antipathogen properties that other mosses do not have. These photographs illustrate the article “Mamma knows best: why a generalist hummingbird selects the less abundant moss for nest building” by Francisco E. Fontúrbel, Felipe Osorio, Valentina Riffo, Mauricio Nuñez, Roberto Bastias and Gastón O. Carvallo published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3045