Ocupação e utilização de florestas secundárias e primárias por aves com sistema de acasalamento em lek

Abstract

Secondary growth (SG) is forests in a natural regeneration process that differ from old growth (OG). Currently SG is increasing. Due to this increase, researchers are arguing about the capacity of SG to hold the same biodiversity as OG. For some bird species SG represents an unsuitable habitat, but other species, especially nectarivorous and frugivorous birds, tolerate SG. These birds also have another characteristic in common, the leking mating system. Leks refer to clustering of males to exhibit to females to mate. We hypothesize how lek occurrence changes between SF and OG. In other words, are lekking species capable to lek in SG? To address this question we sampled OG and SG areas with autonomous recorders to compare occupancy probabilities of the target species and their leks between habitats. To analyze our data we used multistate model with imperfection detection. Multistate models allow us to estimate different kinds of occupancy for species. Imperfect detection is important because it separates the real biological data from methodological biases. Our results show that the occurrence probability of most of the species and leks are higher in SG than in OG which could mean that the value of this habitat for conservation of forest species is higher than previously thought.