Feeding ecology of the waterbirds in a tropical mangrove in the southeast Gulf of Mexico

ABSTRACT

Species that exploit the same type of environmental resources are defined as a guild, which have similar needs in the use of food or habitat. It was analyzed the diet of five waterbirds’ offsprings species (Neotropic Cormorant (Nannopterum brasilianus), Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens), Boat-billed Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius), Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) and Great Egret (Ardea alba)), by prey identification and calculated the relative importance, overlap and breadth diet. The general diet of the piscivorous guild consisted of 17 fish species from 13 genera and eight families. The highest overlap was between the Reddish Egret and Boat-billed Heron. Fish species dominated the diets of all studied waterbirds, Poecilia velifera was the most abundant prey species in each of the birds, suggesting that they are abundant in the wetlands system of northern Yucatan. Diet overlap in waterbirds species depends on the use of resources and feeding habitat. Since reproductive success largely depends on the availability of food resources, mainly of resident or estuarine fishes. The information about diet is important for the conservation of waterbirds.

KEYWORDS:

• Trophic ecology
• Herons
• Piscivores
• nesting season
• coastal fishes

Acknowledgments

We thank to Alfredo Gallardo and K. López-Aguiar for technical support. Several students of the Coastal Ecology Laboratory at UNAM-Sisal were involved in the field and laboratory work. A special thanks to Dr. Ann Grant for the spelling and English language revision to the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by PAPIIT UNAM [IN213012, IN207609]; PAPIME UNAM [PE204012] and CONACYT [103229].