Movement ecology of the threatened Campo MinerGeositta poecilopteraand its implications for the conservation of tropical open grassland birds

Abstract

Summary Understanding the types of movements exhibited by a threatened species is paramount for creating conservation and management strategies. The Campo Miner (Geositta poeciloptera) is a threatened obligate grassland bird endemic to the South American Cerrado. Literature disagrees about its movement ecology, with authors suggesting strategies as contradictory as residency and nomadism. The species requires short and sparse grass cover to breed and seems to be associated with fires, tracking recently burned grassland patches. We studied the movement ecology of marked Campo Miners for seven years, integrating our results with information from citizen science data, museum specimens, and the literature. After investigating every main movement strategy exhibited by bird populations, we found no evidence of regular migration in the species (e.g. altitudinal, short- or long-distance). The Campo Miner is a resident species with territorial behaviour restricted to the breeding season, which apparently results in seasonal variation in its detectability, biasing our perception about its seasonal abundance and distribution. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding local movements in the species, which predicts that Campo Miners: (1) establish their territories at the beginning of the breeding season in patches of suitable habitat; (2) stop defending their territories after the breeding season; (3) stay during the non-breeding season in their home ranges, also wandering across neighbouring home ranges; (4) abandon their home ranges if the grass cover becomes high and dense or when a better quality habitat patch becomes available, using fires as a cue for locating recently burned patches that will soon

The future of suitable habitats of an endangered Neotropical grassland bird: A path to extinction?

“…The possible cause of the extinction of the species in these regions is attributed to the wiping of natural grasslands, replaced by exotic pastures and crops (Lopes et al, 2009 ; Silveira, 2009 ). The lack of proper fire management needs also to be considered, as the species is fire‐dependent, occupying recently burned areas (Lopes et al, 2023 ; Machado et al, 2017 ; Willis, 2004 ). None of the studies point to climate change as a possible cause of the extinction of the Campo Miner.…”

“…Even if the areas predicted by the model are indeed environmentally suitable for Campo Miners, other factors must also be considered. As a specialist grassland bird that tolerates only little changes in land use (Lopes et al, 2023 ; Machado et al, 2017 ; Meireles et al, 2018 ), the Campo Miner needs vast areas of natural grasslands, however, these areas are less common (Borges et al, 2019 ) and poorly represented in reserves. Protected areas are important because, by suffering less anthropogenic pressures and land use changes, they can, in addition to preserving species and environments, help to mitigate the effects of long‐term climate change (Dudley et al, 2009 ).…”

“…However, the strategy of creating new protected areas for the species needs a lot of caution, since, despite being a territorial species, Campo Miner shows strict habitat requirements, living in very open grasslands that are shaped by the fire regime and grazing pressure. Therefore, the habitat of the species needs to be carefully managed (Lopes et al, 2023 ).…”

“…Due to its distribution, we used the entire boundary of the Cerrado, covering the three countries of occurrence (Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay), as the study area, also considering all Brazilian states where there are records of occurrence of the species (see Lopes et al, 2023 ; Figure 1 ).…”

“…For all records found, we organized the database by location, date (<1950, 1950–1990, and >1990), and geographic coordinates. The choice of cut‐off dates was based on the study by Lopes et al ( 2023 ). For those records to which it was not possible to accurately identify their exact geographic location, we adopted the municipal seat as a reference.…”