Dieta das aves em regiões de área úmida

Abstract

Research on avian diets plays a crucial role in understanding ecosystems, providing valuable insights into fauna, flora, and seasonal variations. The traditional classification into trophic guilds, such as insectivores, frugivores, and carnivores, has evolved, revealing a research gap in the precise categorization of avian dietary preferences. Recent articles have adopted a more refined approach, identifying subcategories like insectivore/frugivore to capture nuances in diet, such as a prevalence of invertebrates supplemented by fruits. The existence of the Parkerian gap underscores a scarcity of basic knowledge about species, including crucial details like diet, essential for a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem functioning. These research gaps underscore the importance of thoroughly exploring avian feeding habits for a more complete and informed understanding of their interactions in the environment. Our research objectives are: I) to analyze existing patterns in studies on avian diets in wetland regions worldwide and II) to categorize the diets of understory birds in a seasonally inundated wetland region, investigating whether there are specializations or generalizations in species diets within a trophic guild category. To achieve the first objective, we utilized a database available on the Web of Science platform with specific keywords related to avian diets in wetland regions. After filtering, 159 articles remained, revealing biases in biogeography, taxonomy, and methodology in avian diet studies in wetlands. For the second objective, we employed a database from the avian ecology laboratory at the Federal University of Mato Grosso. We used a food preference index and the Shannon index to analyze species diets. We found that most analyzed species exhibited a level of specialization in the consumed item type, with only two species exclusive to a guild category. In conclusion, there are significant research gaps in avian diet studies in wet environments, especially with understory species, and species within a guild category display specialization in the types of consumed food items.