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Distribution and habitat use of the endemic Yungas Guan Penelope bridgesi in the Southern Yungas of Argentina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2022

SILVANA TEJERINA
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas - Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, Argentina.
SOFIA BARDAVID
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas - Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, Argentina.
NATALIA POLITI
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas - Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, Argentina.
JAIME BERNARDOS
Affiliation:
National University of La Pampa, La Pampa, Argentina.
ANNA PIDGEON
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin Madison - Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
LUIS OSVALDO RIVERA*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas - Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, Argentina.
*
*Author for correspondence; email: luisrivera@fca.unju.edu.ar
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Summary

Identifying the factors that determine the spatial distribution and habitat use of species of conservation importance is essential to developing effective conservation and management strategies. As seed dispersers, guans play a key role in the regeneration of forests in South America and are threatened mainly by habitat loss and hunting pressure. The Yungas Guan Penelope bridgesi, an endemic species restricted to the Southern Yungas of Argentina and Bolivia, has been recently recognized as a separate species. To determine the conservation status of Yungas Guan, information on its distribution and habitat use is urgently needed. The objectives of our work were to 1) determine the potential distribution of the Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Argentina and 2) assess the influence of environmental and anthropogenic covariables on habitat use of the species. We used records of Yungas Guan to model the potential distribution of the species with MaxEnt software and developed occupancy models to determine habitat use and influential elements of the landscape (puestos, urban areas, roads, rivers, and elevation). We obtained data on the presence of Yungas Guan with camera traps, with an effort of 6,990 camera trap-days. The total potential distribution of the species was 21,256 km2. We found that the habitat use by Yungas Guan increased with proximity to rivers and streams. The probability of habitat use was 0.27, with a range of 0.02–0.42. Of the total potential distribution area, 15,781 km2 (81%) had a probability of habitat use greater than 0.2. This study is the first in determining the potential distribution of Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Salta and Jujuy provinces in Argentina and highlights the importance of conducting analyses with occupancy models to assess the influence of environmental and anthropogenic variables and threats to cracid species.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of BirdLife International
Figure 0

Figure 1. Location of camera traps with presence of Yungas Guan (black circles) and without presence of the species (white circles) in the study area within the Southern Yungas of Argentina.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Distribution of the potential habitat of the Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Argentina.

Figure 2

Table 1. Models used to determine the habitat use of the Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Argentina.

Figure 3

Table 2. Beta values of the model averaging, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals for the variables that affected the probability of habitat use (ψ) and the probability of detection (p) of Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Argentina.

Figure 4

Figure 3. Probability of expected habitat use (bracketed by 95% CI in grey) of Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas as a function of distance to rivers. This variable explained 44% of the variation in probability of habitat use.

Figure 5

Figure 4. Distribution of the potential habitat and probability of habitat use of the Yungas Guan in the Southern Yungas of Argentina.

Supplementary material: File

Tejerina et al. supplementary material

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