{"id":146621,"date":"2014-04-15T16:05:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T19:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=146621"},"modified":"2017-03-13T13:59:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T16:59:48","slug":"marshes-alto-tiete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/marshes-alto-tiete\/","title":{"rendered":"In the marshes of the Alto Tiet\u00ea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Female

Bruno Renn\u00f3<\/span>Female S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren (Formicivora paludicola<\/em>)Bruno Renn\u00f3<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Some twenty small marshes around the headwaters of the Tiet\u00ea and Para\u00edba do Sul rivers, 50 to 100 kilometers from the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, are the only known habitat of Formicivora paludicola<\/i>, the first bird species that occurs only in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo. In no other preserved area of Atlantic Forest in Brazil has there been any record of specimens of the S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren, the popular name for the species, which was described by researchers in the December issue of the journal Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia<\/i>. \u201cBirds endemic to only one state are rare,\u201d says Lu\u00eds F\u00e1bio Silveira of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo Zoology Museum (MZ-USP), one of the paper\u2019s co-authors. \u201cNature does not honor political boundaries created by man.\u201d Antwrens usually live in pairs, a male and a female, and have a limited flight autonomy of just 25 meters. They never leave their marshy environment, where they hop back and forth between the leaves and stalks of cattails, a typical plant of marshes and floodplains.<\/p>\n

Finding a new species of bird\u2014the most frequently studied animal in the world of biology\u2014east of this major metropolitan area of Brazil was a great surprise. This fragile antwren, measuring 11 centimeters (cm) long and weighing 9 grams on average, feeds on insects and lives at mid-level in the vegetation of isolated marshes located within the land areas of the municipalities of Mogi das Cruzes, Sales\u00f3polis, Biritiba-Mirim, S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 dos Campos and Guararema. These marshy areas lie at the headwaters of the two rivers, at elevations of 600 to 760 meters above sea level. The new bird belongs to the family Thamnophilidae, which consists of 226 species (antwrens, antbirds, antvireos) and 46 genera. With the addition of the S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren, the genus Formicivora <\/i>now includes nine species.<\/p>\n

But in addition to making ornithologists happy, the identification of this little winged resident of the marshes around Mogi das Cruzes also brings cause for concern. The S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren is in serious jeopardy of imminent disappearance. Having been only just discovered, it can already be considered \u201ccritically endangered,\u201d the final category before a species is declared extinct or nearly so, under the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Studies by Silveira and Glaucia Del-Rio, his Master\u2019s student, indicate that there has been an enormous contraction of the marshy areas that served as habitat for the bird, owing to the expansion of urban centers, as well as rural and industrial activities, in eastern S\u00e3o Paulo State. \u201cWe estimate that the total population of antwrens today is 560 to 620 specimens,\u201d says Del-Rio. \u201cOur calculations indicate that the size of the present-day area of occurrence of the species (taking into account all the marshes where it has been found) is 1.4 square kilometers\u201d\u2014a land area more than a thousand times smaller than the size of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to maps from the S\u00e3o Paulo Geographic and Geological Commission consulted by Del-Rio along with Marco R\u00eago, between 1885 and 1905 there were over 410 km<\/span>2<\/sup> of marshes and floodplains around the Tiet\u00ea and Alto Para\u00edba do Sul rivers, of which 300 km<\/span>2<\/sup> exhibited the features necessary for hosting the species. \u201cIt is practically certain that the antwren existed within the city of S\u00e3o Paulo in the not-too-distant past,\u201d Silveira says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"036-041_Aves_217-2\"<\/a>Sister species
\n<\/b>The new bird looks similar to its sister species, Formicivora acutirostris<\/i>, popularly known as simply the bicudinho-do-brejo<\/i>, or Marsh Antwren, which occurs along the coastal strip that extends from Paran\u00e1 to northern Rio Grande do Sul. But the S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren has features that distinguish it anatomically and genetically from its closest relative. The thighs and underparts of the males are black, darker than those same parts in the Southern antwren. The back is dark grayish-brown, also distinct from that of its sister species. The exposed upper ridge of its beak is smaller than that of the more Southern-occurring bird. The females of the two species also have distinct appearances. Molecular studies indicate that the most recent common ancestor of these two types of antwren likely lived during a time prior to the emergence of modern man. \u201cWe analyzed mitochondrial DNA from the two species and estimated that, evolutionarily speaking, they separated between 250,000 and 640,000 years ago,\u201d Silveira says.<\/p>\n

A little over nine years passed between the discovery of the first S\u00e3o Paulo Antwrens and the official description of the species. The first person to record the sounds of specimens of this bird was Dante Renato Corr\u00eaa Buzzetti of the Center for Ornithological Studies, an NGO in S\u00e3o Paulo, one of the authors of the recently published scientific paper. On October 4, 2004, during an excursion through a vast marsh in Mogi das Cruzes dominated by cattails and other aquatic plants, Buzzetti came across a female and a young adult of what he judged initially to be specimens of <\/span>F. acutirostris<\/i>, the Southern antwren.<\/span> <\/i>Intrigued by the presence of these rare animals in the region, he returned there the next day, caught sight of a black-bellied antwren and collected two specimens of the bird.<\/span><\/p>\n

A short time later, Silveira also found the bird in marshes in the municipality of Biritiba-Mirim. In February 2005 he discovered a population of approximately 100 antwrens in that location. \u201cThe problem was that the area was about to be flooded by construction of a dam,\u201d the MZ-USP ornithologist recalls. \u201cWe had to quickly put together a plan to remove the birds from there and reintroduce them into locations with the same features.\u201d Seventy-two antwrens were rescued and relocated in half a dozen marshes in the region. This is the reason why today there are places where the bird occurs spontaneously and naturally, and others where it was introduced (<\/span>see map<\/a>)<\/i>. If the marshes of the Alto Tiet\u00ea continue to shrink, however, the S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren could disappear altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\n<\/span>Distribution, habitat and territory size of the S\u00e3o Paulo Marsh Antwren (Formicivora SP. Nov.) (n\u00ba 2011\/16251-7<\/a>); Grant mechanism <\/b>Master\u2019s degree scholarship; Principal Investigator <\/b>Lu\u00eds F\u00e1bio Silveira; Grant recipient<\/b> Glaucia Cristina Del-Rio; Investment<\/b> R$43,360.02 (FAPESP).<\/p>\n

Scientific article<\/em>
\nBUZZETTI, D.R.C et al<\/em>. A new species of Formicivora Swainson, 1824 (Thamnophilidae<\/i>) from the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil<\/a>. Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia.<\/b> V.21, No. 4, p. 269-91. Dec. 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New bird species is the first to occur exclusively in areas of S\u00e3o Paulo","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":[159],"tags":[224,266],"coauthors":[101],"class_list":["post-146621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-ecology","tag-zoology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146621","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=146621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146621"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=146621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}