The old and lush forests surrounding the Tambopata River in southeast Peru are home to clay licks that attract up to 32 species of parrots, including Amazons, Pionus, several species of macaws, and caiques. The Macaw Society (formerly known as the Tambopata Macaw Project) conducts long-term research about the ecology and conservation of parrots and operates under the direction of Drs. Donald Brightsmith and Gabriela Vigo-Trauco of the Schubot Center for Avian Health at the Texas A&M University.
One of their new projects involves looking into the effects of climate change on the forests of the Tambopata region, and how this, in turn, affects food sources and the breeding success of parrots, especially the macaws that have been part of their research studies since 1989. Having worked in the region for so long, they have a solid baseline of data and information from prior years. Their hypothesis – climate change is affecting access to food sources to sustain successful breeding. Here is more information about their new and important study, in their own words.
Protecting Tambopata’s Parrots: The Impact of Climate Change
Global climate change is having major impacts on the structure and function of tropical forests and is predicted to alter the timing and magnitude of forest flowering and fruiting events. Despite the fact that these changes in fruit production will have major impacts on the behavior and survival of a broad array of keystone frugivores, there has been little study of how climate is impacting tropical forest phenology and how these impacts are cascading through local frugivore communities.
One group of iconic species that will likely be impacted by these climate-induced changes are the psittacines (macaws, parrots, and their relatives). This highly endangered group consume mainly forest fruits and seeds acting as both seed predators and fruit dispersers. In previous research, we found that Ara macao breed during the annual peak in fruit availability (November through February). However, this peak in food abundance is short enough that by the time the macaw chicks fledge local food supplies are dropping rapidly. In order to cope with this reduction in food supplies, most A. macao and their young left their breeding ranges and flew about 30 km only 15 to 38 days after their young fledged. Given the poor flying ability of young macaws, traveling with vulnerable young so soon after fledging is not ideal and suggest that food availability patterns in the forests of Tambopata may not be very good for breeding populations of A. macao. If true, this somewhat precarious situation could make A. macao and other parrot species in the region vulnerable to climate-driven changes in the local fruiting patterns.
The core objective of the study is to determine if climate change is driving systematic shifts in tropical forest phenology and how these shifts impact food availability and annual life history patterns of macaws and parrots in the Tambopata region of Madre de Dios. To achieve our objective, we will resurvey forest phenology plots first surveyed 15 years ago to document changes in fruiting patterns. These changes in fruiting will then be compared to long-term data on parrot nesting and natural history patterns from the diverse psittacine community found in the Tambopata region.
Working out of the Malinowski Biological Station, crews will be monitoring both forest plots and macaw nests to determine how both have changed since our work began back in the early 2000s with 25 years of macaw nesting data and a spread of over 15 years in our forest data, we hope to uncover information on how the changing climate has impacted the forest and birds to date, and help us better predict how future changes in climate and forest fruiting may impact the parrots and macaws of this megadiverse region.
As part of this new research initiative, there is a need to replace some of the most popular nest boxes used by macaw pairs for the past decade. This month’s Lafeber grant goes to support this study and the new nest boxes needed! For more information, you can visit The Macaw Society web page here.