{"id":122251,"date":"2013-06-21T19:29:44","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T22:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=122251"},"modified":"2017-03-08T15:19:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T18:19:29","slug":"new-birds-of-amazonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/new-birds-of-amazonia\/","title":{"rendered":"New birds of Amazonia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New

LUCIANO MOREIRA-LIMA<\/span>New species of jay of the genus\u00a0Cyanocorax <\/em>now threatened with extinction; this species is found only along the edges of natural prairies in the southern Amazonas StateLUCIANO MOREIRA-LIMA<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Brazilian ornithology has not witnessed\u00a0such a significant contribution to the expansion\u00a0of our knowledge of biodiversity\u00a0since the second half of the 19th century:\u00a015 new species of birds of the Brazilian Amazon\u00a0region will be formally described for the first\u00a0time in a series of scientific articles expected\u00a0to be published in July in a special volume of\u00a0the Handbook of the Birds of the World<\/em> from by\u00a0the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions.\u00a0The volume is the latest in an encyclopedic and\u00a0educational 17-book collection that is used as a\u00a0reference source by amateur and professional ornithologists alike.<\/p>\n

The descriptions are authored by individuals\u00a0from three Brazilian research institutions: the\u00a0Zoology Museum of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0(MZ-USP), the National Institute for Amazonian Research (Inpa) in Manaus, the Em\u00edlio Goeldi Museum of Par\u00e1 (MPEG), in Bel\u00e9m, as well as the\u00a0Louisiana State University Museum of Natural\u00a0Science (LSUMNS) in the United States. Such a\u00a0large collection of new Brazilian birds has not\u00a0been presented to the world in a single work\u00a0since the 1871 publication of Zur Ornithologie Brasiliens<\/em> by Austrian ornithologist August von\u00a0Pelzeln (1825-1891), which described 40 species\u00a0of birds collected by naturalist Johann Natterer\u00a0(1787-1843), also Austrian, on his trips through\u00a0the Brazilian Amazon.<\/p>\n

Eleven of the new species are endemic to Brazil,\u00a0and four can also be found in Peru and Bolivia.\u00a0Eight occur west of the Madeira River in\u00a0western Amazonia; five only inhabit areas located between the Madeira and Tapaj\u00f3s rivers in the\u00a0heart of the northern region; and two are found\u00a0only in habitats east of the Tapaj\u00f3s in the state\u00a0of Par\u00e1, in the easternmost region of the tropical forest. In the special volume of the Handbook<\/em>,\u00a0the authors describe the morphology (forms and structures), genetics and vocalization (song and\u00a0other sounds) of the new species. Specific maps\u00a0for each species also show their locations of occurrence.\u00a0Until the book is officially published,\u00a0however, the scientific names and some details\u00a0of the anatomy and lifestyle of the new species\u00a0cannot be revealed.<\/p>\n

The largest and most spectacular of these\u00a0birds\u2014all of which are previously unknown and\u00a0undocumented in the scientific literature\u2014is a jay\u00a0of the genus Cyanocorax<\/em> that is approximately 35\u00a0centimeters in length. It lives only on the edges\u00a0of natural prairies amidst the forest between the\u00a0Madeira and Purus rivers in the state of Amazonas.\u00a0\u201cThis jay is threatened with extinction,\u201d\u00a0says Mario Cohn-Haft,\u00a0curator of Inpa\u2019s ornithology\u00a0department and principal discoverer of\u00a0the canc\u00e3o-da-campina<\/em>, the popular name for\u00a0the bird. \u201cIts habitat is in jeopardy, and we could\u00a0lose the species before we have time to do an indepth\u00a0study.\u201d Its principal region of occurrence is\u00a0a prairie complex 150 kilometers south of Manaus\u00a0in an area near Highway BR-319, which connects\u00a0that Amazonas State capital to the city of Porto\u00a0Velho. The highway is being repaved, and the\u00a0researchers fear that the access it will provide to\u00a0the area will put the species\u2019 habitat at risk. \u201cThe\u00a0new jay also occurs in an area of natural prairies\u00a0in southern Amazonas near Porto Velho where\u00a0there are many settlers from southern Brazil who\u00a0confuse it with the gralha-azul<\/em> or Azure Jay [the\u00a0state bird of Paran\u00e1],\u201d Cohn-Haft notes.<\/p>\n

\"A

FABIO SCHUNCK<\/span>A poiaeiro-de-chicomendes, popular name of a species of the family TyrannidaeFABIO SCHUNCK<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

With the exception of a bird of the order Piciformes,\u00a0which includes toucans and woodpeckers,\u00a0the other Amazonian species here described\u00a0belong to the order Passeriformes. Popularly known as passerines, the members of this group\u00a0account for approximately 55% of known bird\u00a0species and include sparrows, canaries, tyrant\u00a0flycatchers, etc. In addition to the jay and a distant\u00a0relative of the toucan, the book will describe\u00a0five species of the family Thamnophilidae (which\u00a0includes antbirds), four from the family Dendrocolaptidae\u00a0(all new types of woodcreeper), three from the huge family Tyrannidae (which\u00a0includes 400 species found from Alaska to Tierra\u00a0del Fuego) and one from the small family Polioptilidae\u00a0(which has at least 10 species that are\u00a0commonly known as gnatcatchers).<\/p>\n

In numerical terms, the new Amazonian\u00a0species represent an increase\u00a0of nearly 1% in Brazil\u2019s avian biodiversity.\u00a0\u201cWe have the second highest\u00a0number of known bird species in the\u00a0world, about 1,840,\u201d says Lu\u00eds F\u00e1bio\u00a0Silveira, curator of the ornithology department at the USP Zoology Museum,\u00a0one of the coordinators of the\u00a0initiative. \u201cOnly Colombia has more\u00a0species than we do\u2014approximately\u00a01,900. But a decade from now, we\u2019ll\u00a0probably reach 2,000 known bird\u00a0species in Brazil.\u00a0The country\u2019s\u00a0museums contain a number of specimens\u00a0of unknown birds native to\u00a0various biomes, and these will be\u00a0described in the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birds are the most extensively\u00a0studied vertebrate group in biology, yet it appears that much remains to be learned, especially\u00a0in the Amazon, despite the fact that this region\u00a0has been the focus of a great deal of research over\u00a0recent decades. \u201cBiodiversity in general, even in regard to the birds of this biome, is far from fully\u00a0evidenced,\u201d says ornithologist Bret Whitney, a\u00a0researcher with LSUMNS and principal coordinator\u00a0of the endeavor. \u201cThere is still a long way to go for Amazonia to be considered sufficiently\u00a0well known to enable us to plan and sustain the\u00a0existing and future biodiversity\u00a0reserves.\u201d Outside his academic\u00a0life, Whitney is a partner in Field\u00a0Guides, an ecotourism company\u00a0that takes people on birdwatching tours in various parts of the world, including the Amazon.<\/p>\n

\"A

ZIG KOCH<\/span>A new species of scythebillZIG KOCH<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Several of the dozens of Amazon\u00a0expeditions over the last 10\u00a0years that have led to the discovery\u00a0of new species were partially\u00a0or fully paid for by a FAPESP-financed\u00a0project that Silveira headed. Other expeditions received\u00a0support from Brazil\u2019s National Council for Scientific and Technological\u00a0Development (CNPq), the\u00a0Ministry of the Environment, the\u00a0Biodiversity Research Program of\u00a0the Ministry of Science and Technology,\u00a0state-level ministers, and\u00a0even the National Geographic Society in the US. On one such expedition\u00a0through the tropical forest\u00a0last year, approximately twenty\u00a0researchers and post-graduate students\u00a0from institutions participating\u00a0in the project rented a boat for\u00a0a month (for R$75,000) to look for new bird species\u00a0as they cruised along the Sucunduri River, a\u00a0tributary of the Madeira.<\/p>\n

On other occasions, the scientists have even\u00a0needed armed protection to go into areas that\u00a0could be home to new types of birds. A common\u00a0locale of one of the new species, a scythebill\u00a0called the arapa\u00e7u-de-bico-torto<\/em>, is the Altamira\u00a0National Forest near Highway BR-163 in Brazil\u2019s\u00a0southern Par\u00e1 State. The area is a conservation\u00a0unit managed by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources\u00a0(IBAMA). \u201cBut to be able to work safely in the\u00a0reserve, we had to be escorted by soldiers from\u00a0the Brazilian army. There was an illegal gold mine operating inside the unit,\u201d says Dr. Alexandre\u00a0Aleixo of the MPEG ornithology department. \u201cThe stress of working in that kind of place\u00a0is considerable and, if it weren\u2019t for the Army\u2019s presence, we wouldn\u2019t have been able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In modern times, the process of describing recently\u00a0discovered species takes place on the pages\u00a0of scientific journals rather than in books. However,\u00a0because of the importance and singularity of this group of new Amazonian bird species, the encyclopedia\u2019s publishers and the authors of the\u00a0papers chose an alternate route. Each new species\u00a0was the focus of a separate paper (a scientific\u00a0article) written along the lines of what would be\u00a0prepared for an academic journal. The Handbook<\/em> team hired the services of a group of specialists\u00a0to handle the peer review process and approve\u00a0the texts containing the formal descriptions of\u00a0each species. In science, a text that describes a\u00a0new life form and labels it with a Latin name\u00a0consisting of two terms, genus and species, is\u00a0the equivalent of a birth certificate for that species.\u00a0It also serves as basic documentation of a\u00a0region\u2019s biodiversity\u2014in this case, birds of the\u00a0Amazon\u2014and as a basis for formulating public\u00a0policy on the environment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The initiative to publish all of the new species\u00a0at once took shape last year under the leadership\u00a0of Whitney, Silveira, Cohn-Haft and Aleixo,\u00a0with the ongoing participation of post-graduate students from their respective institutions. The\u00a0group was producing texts for the 17th volume of\u00a0the Handbook<\/em>, which will purportedly contain\u00a0information on bird species recently discovered throughout the world from 1992 to 2011. The species\u00a0formally described by scientists during that\u00a0period were not covered in the other 16 books\u00a0in the series, which summarized and organized data on each member of the known bird families. This special volume is expected to cover 68\u00a0species initially, all of which have been formally\u00a0described in papers published in scientific journals\u00a0over the past two decades, yielding an average\u00a0of fewer than four new species discovered\u00a0each year. The extra book will ultimately cover\u00a083 species including the 15 Amazonian species,\u00a0the scientific descriptions of which will appear\u00a0in the book on an exceptional basis. The group\u2019s\u00a0thinking in choosing to reveal the nine species in\u00a0a single work was to call attention to the importance\u00a0of preserving the biodiversity of the Amazon\u00a0region where two-thirds of the bird species\u00a0in Brazil are found. \u201cIf we published each paper\u00a0separately in different journals, it wouldn\u2019t have\u00a0the same impact,\u201d Silveira says.<\/p>\n

The act of looking for birds in nature calls to\u00a0mind an image of an ornithologist wearing Bermuda\u00a0shorts, a t-shirt and a hat, carrying binoculars\u00a0and perhaps a camera. One item not mentioned, however, is absolutely mandatory for an ornithologist: a recording device. Most of the\u00a015 new species were initially identified by their\u00a0song, which to a specialist\u2019s ear has a different or unfamiliar sound. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to be highly\u00a0gifted to recognize a different song. It\u2019s a matter\u00a0of training”, Whitney says. \u201cIt\u2019s like recognizing\u00a0a new song by your favorite band when you hear the first chord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only two decades ago, the description of a\u00a0new bird species, as was true for most living\u00a0creatures, was based only on the uniqueness\u00a0of its anatomy and outward appearance. If the\u00a0plumage and bone structure of a specimen significantly\u00a0differed from the features found in\u00a0already known species, the animal could be labeled\u00a0as a member of a new species. Today, in\u00a0addition to morphology, two additional basic\u00a0criteria are used to propose the existence of a\u00a0new bird species: analysis of its vocalizations and its genetic material. \u201cSome researchers\u00a0now propose a new bird species even when\u00a0only one of those three parameters is shown\u00a0to be different from that of other known species,\u201d\u00a0Silveira notes. \u201cWe are conservative in\u00a0our work, and we have proposed a new species\u00a0only when we found differences in at least two\u00a0of the three criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aided by special software, the recorded song\u00a0of each candidate for a new bird species was\u00a0compared with homologous vocalizations of\u00a0similar species. At times, only a few seconds of\u00a0comparison were enough to confirm the first\u00a0impression perceived by the trained ears of the\u00a0ornithologists: the sound frequencies emitted by\u00a0the new species differed from the songs produced\u00a0by related birds, even for some species that were\u00a0physically very similar. For each new discovery,\u00a0the researchers also sequenced a few thousand\u00a0pairs of gene bases present in nuclear DNA and\u00a0in mitochondria, which are cell organelles that\u00a0are responsible for energy production and have\u00a0their own independent genome that is frequently\u00a0used for studies of phylogeny.<\/p>\n

This genetic material was compared with\u00a0the DNA of already-known species to verify\u00a0their uniqueness and, whenever possible, to\u00a0establish kinship relations or a phylogenetic\u00a0tree for the new species. \u201cFor many of the new\u00a0birds we are describing, the confirmation that\u00a0it was a different species was actually obtained\u00a0from the genetic component of the analysis,\u201d\u00a0Aleixo comments. \u201cThis reinforces the importance\u00a0of obtaining genetic material as part of\u00a0scientific specimen collection\u2014a process that\u00a0unfortunately is not yet in practice at a number\u00a0of museums and collections across Brazil.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bico-chato-do-sucunduri

FABIO SCHUNCK<\/span>Bico-chato-do-sucunduriFABIO SCHUNCK<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Genetic studies can provide valuable information\u00a0about species origins. The evolutionary history\u00a0of two of these newly described birds\u2014two\u00a0antwrens (chorozinhos<\/em>) of the genus Herpsilochmus<\/em>\u2014is a good illustration of the inroads possible with this approach. The two species are nearly\u00a0identical morphologically, but their vocalizations\u00a0are clearly distinct. One of the birds inhabits a\u00a0stretch along the right-hand side of the Madeira\u00a0River, and the other lives only on the left bank.\u00a0In this case, the Madeira, the banks of which\u00a0can be as much as 10 kilometers apart at some\u00a0points, functions as a natural barrier between\u00a0the two bird populations, which have no contact\u00a0with one another. The long-term separation of\u00a0the two groups of chorozinhos<\/em> has led to an evolutionary\u00a0process that biologists have termed\u00a0speciation: the emergence of a new species\u2014in\u00a0this case, two\u2014created by the fragmentation of\u00a0a common ancestral population that now occurs\u00a0in environments that have no communication\u00a0(vicarious effect). Despite enormous morphological\u00a0similarities among the two populations\u00a0of chorozinhos<\/em>, genetic studies have revealed\u2014shockingly\u2014that they were separated by the Madeira\u00a0two million years ago.<\/p>\n

The role played by the major rivers of the\u00a0Amazon in the emergence of new life forms\u00a0through the creation of geographic barriers insurmountable\u00a0to many species is well known to\u00a0science. What is new, ornithologists say, is that\u00a0even waterways that are not as immense can play\u00a0the same role in certain cases. At least three new\u00a0species were discovered, for example, in the region between the Aripuan\u00e3 and Machado rivers\u00a0in the southern Amazonas State and northern Rond\u00f4nia State: one of the chorozinhos<\/em> mentioned\u00a0above, the choquinha-do-rio-roosevelt<\/em> and the cantador-de-rondon<\/em> (these are the popular\u00a0names for the birds). That area, which is also\u00a0traversed by the Roosevelt River, served as a\u00a0refuge for minor bird species that became \u201ccaptive\u201d and, over the years, developed their own\u00a0features within the territory between the river\u00a0banks. \u201cSome rivers in Amazonia have changed\u00a0their course through evolutionary history,\u201d Silveira notes. \u201cSometimes this process of riverbed\u00a0accommodation separates populations of birds\u00a0that once lived in the same environment.\u201d The\u00a0many rivers that wind through the greater tropical forest are an abundant source of biodiversity\u00a0within and around their waters.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nSystematics, taxonomy and biogeography of Neotropical birds: The\u00a0Cracidae as model (2007\/56378-0<\/a>); Grant mechanism<\/strong> Regular Line\u00a0of Research Project Award. Coord<\/strong>. Lu\u00eds F\u00e1bio Silveira (MZ-USP);\u00a0Investment<\/strong> R$86,928.28 (FAPESP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazilian’s ornithological discovery describes fifteen new species","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[206,224],"coauthors":[101],"class_list":["post-122251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cover","tag-biodiversity","tag-ecology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122251"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=122251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}