Vocalisation of the rare and flagship species Pharomachrus mocinno (Aves: Trogonidae): implications for its taxonomy, evolution and conservation

ABSTRACT

The Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno is a rare Neotropical bird included in the IUCN red list as Near Threatened. Fragmentation of its habitat, the cloud forest, is considered as the principal threat. Two subspecies are currently recognised but genetic and morphometric studies suggested they could be considered as full species. We assessed whether male vocalisation would support a species delimitation hypothesis. We recorded in the field and downloaded from sound archives vocalisation of 57 individuals from 30 different localities distributed in 11 countries. We estimated the acoustic differences of all the Pharomachrus taxa with multivariate analyses and machine learning techniques. Our results show vocal differences between P. m. mocinno and P. m. costaricensis that could have a molecular basis, potentially due to genetic drift developed during the more than three million years of separation of P. m. mocinno (from Mexico to Nicaragua) and P. m. costaricensis (Costa Rica and Panama). We therefore suggest that P. mocinno could potentially be divided into two species. A possible separation of these taxa into two species could have important consequences for the conservation status of the Resplendent Quetzals, and redirect conservation efforts for these taxa.

KEYWORDS:

• Territorial vocalisation
• Pharomachrus mocinno
• Resplendent Quetzal
• Trogonidae
• conservation

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the guides Jesús Lucas and Selvin Xiloj for their useful help during field work and their shared knowledge, to family Hazard for the support to conduct this study in Los Andes reserve. We thank Sébastien Hardy and CEMCA for the important support to conduct the study in Guatemala. We thank Camille Desjonquѐres, Juan Ulloa and Robin Simonot for their valuable comments. We are grateful to Macaulay Library, Laboratorio de Bioacústica de La Universidad de Costa Rica, Biblioteca de Sonidos de Aves de México, Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and Xeno-Canto. We thank the recordists who shared their sounds: T. Parker, V. Emanuel, S. Olmstead, M. Robbins, F. Schmitt, N. Krabbe, P. Boesman, D. Ross, C. Marantz, S. Gaunt, J. Sánchez, P. Driver, E. Morton, A. Martínez, M. Medler, J. de León, A. LaBastille, S. Jones, F. González-García, A. May, C. Duncan, C. Hanks, B. O’Shea, and K. Zimmer.

We are very grateful to Ricky Lopez Bruni for sharing the picture of the Resplendent Quetzal. Special thanks to Andrew Horn and Nacho Areta for their valuable comments to improve this research article. Finally we thank Margarita Vides and Lillian Irving for the improvement of the English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessedhere.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funding by the National Geographic Society [grant number 9479–6]. The first author received a scholarship by Fundación Guatefuturo [69–2015].