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Acoustic Behavior and Ecology of the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus Mocinno, a Flagship Tropical Bird Species Pablo Rafael Bolanos Sittler

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Acoustic Behavior and Ecology of the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus Mocinno, a Flagship Tropical Bird Species Pablo Rafael Bolanos Sittler Acoustic behavior and ecology of the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno, a flagship tropical bird species Pablo Rafael Bolanos Sittler To cite this version: Pablo Rafael Bolanos Sittler. Acoustic behavior and ecology of the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno, a flagship tropical bird species. Biodiversity and Ecology. Museum national d’histoire naturelle - MNHN PARIS, 2019. English. NNT : 2019MNHN0001. tel-02048769 HAL Id: tel-02048769 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02048769 Submitted on 25 Feb 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. MUSEUM NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE Ecole Doctorale Sciences de la Nature et de l’Homme – ED 227 Année 2019 N°attribué par la bibliothèque |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_| THESE Pour obtenir le grade de DOCTEUR DU MUSEUM NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE Spécialité : écologie Présentée et soutenue publiquement par Pablo BOLAÑOS Le 18 janvier 2019 Acoustic behavior and ecology of the Resplendent Quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno, a flagship tropical bird species Sous la direction de : Dr. Jérôme SUEUR, Maître de Conférences, MNHN Dr. Thierry AUBIN, Directeur de Recherche, Université Paris Saclay JURY: Dr. Márquez, Rafael Senior Researcher, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid Rapporteur Dr. Leboucher, Gérard Professeur, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre Rapporteur Dr. Draganoiu, Tudor Maître de Conférences, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre Examinateur Dr. Curé, Charlotte Chargée de recherche, Cerema Est, Groupe Acoustique, Strasbourg Examinateur THE PRIMORDIAL WORLD This is the account of when all is still silent and placid. All is silent and calm. Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky. These, then, are the first words, the first speech. There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, or forest. All alone the sky exists. The face of the earth has not yet appeared. Alone lies the expanse of the sea, along with the womb of all the sky. There is not yet anything gathered together. All is at rest. Nothing stirs. All is languid, at rest in the sky. There is not yet anything standing erect. Only the expanse of the water, only the tranquil sea lies alone. There is not yet anything that might exist. All lies placid and silent in the darkness, in the night. All alone are the Framer and the Shaper, Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent, They Who Have Borne Children and They Who Have Begotten Sons. Luminous they are in the water, wrapped in quetzal feathers and cotinga feathers. Thus they are called Quetzal Serpent. In their essence, they are great sages, great possessors of knowledge. Thus surely there is the sky. There is also Heart of Sky, which is said to be the name of the god. (A fragment of the Mayan sacred book Popol Vuh, translation by A. Christenson) (Picture: Pablo Bolaños) Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisors, Jérôme Sueur and Thierry Aubin. I acknowledge the opportunity they gave me to work with them. Their passionate and rigorous way to conduct science, will be a model to follow in my future work. I would like to thank to the Institut SYstematique Evolution et Biodiversité of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) and the team of Acoustic communications of the laboratory NEUROPSY of the Paris-Sud University, for allowing me to conduct my PhD research with their guideline. I am grateful to the members of the board of examiners for accepting to evaluate my thesis work. Thanks to Rafael Márquez and Gérard Leboucher for accepting being the thesis reviewers, a task which demands a lot of time and patience. I also recognize Tudor Traganoiu and Charlotte Cure, the evaluators, for their participation in this process. I also thank the members of the thesis committee, Samuel Pavard, Yann Tremblay and Pierre-Michel Forget for their time invested reviewing my advances. Our discussions on my thesis project were very important in order to focus on the research objectives, and evaluate the necessary actions to take. I would like to thank the MNHN researchers who collaborated with my work. Special thanks to Jérôme Fuchs for his advice on bird taxonomy and evolution. His participation in the first manuscript was a fundamental contribution. Thanks also to the scientists who collaborated with the statistics of my thesis, Sandrine Pavoine and Amandin Blin, their suggestions and comments were substantial to have confident results. I would like to thank Los Andes reserve and family Hazard, for the hospitality and support to use their installations, to conduct the field work. Thanks also to the field guides, Jesús Lucas and Selvin Xiloj, for their help on the equipment installation. Many students collaborated with my work. The conversations with Manon Ducrettet about her master thesis and her suggestions for the statistics of the chapter three of my PhD thesis, were highly enriching. The traineeship in the laboratory of Robin Simonot, was valuable to my work, especially for the chapter three of my thesis. The dedicated work of Andrea Padilla for her license thesis, who did a large number of manual selections in recordings, was an important contribution for the chapter four of my thesis. During my journey, I had long conversations with passionate people working with Guatemalan birds and the Resplendent Quetzal. In particular, thanks to Ricky Lopez Bruni who also shared pictures of the bird. I am also grateful to Claire Dallies for her time and knowledge shared and for the academic support to my PhD research proposal, from the initial steps. This work required the collaboration of several sound libraries and recordists. I would like to thank Macaulay Library, Laboratorio de Bioacústica de La Universidad de Costa Rica, Biblioteca de Sonidos de Aves de México, the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and Xeno-Canto. Special thanks to Fernando González-García, Marcelo Araya-Salas, and the recordists 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, A. May, C. Duncan, C. Hanks, B. O’Shea, and K. Zimmer. This study was possible thanks to the financing resources necessary to complete numerous long travels to Guatemala and to assist to the conferences and congresses. I am grateful to National Geographic Society, Guatefuturo Fundation, the Institut SYstématique, Evolution et Biodiversité and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). This research has attracted the interest of people and institutions who have encouraged the continuation of the project. I am grateful to Carlos Mérida, Byron Hernández, Oscar Núñez, César Tot, and many others who surely will join the team. Coffee was certainly a basic element to continue and be able to finish this work, but coffee without friends is like a Guatemalan cloud forest without quetzals. I would like to thank Bruno Dastillung, Camille Desjonquères, Juan Ulloa, Maram Caesar, Vitor Dias, Manon Ducrettet, Monica Arias, Sylvain Haupert, Rok Šturm and many other friends who always had an interesting conversation topic during breaks. I would like to thank my family, my parents and sisters. Finally, my commitment with this work would not be possible without the unmeasurable love, understanding and patience of Margarita and our sons Marcos and Juan Diego. Contents Table of contents Résumé ....................................................................................................... 23 General Introduction ................................................................................... 28 Conservation in terrestrial environments .................................................. 29 Conservation in the tropics ...................................................................... 29 Cloud forest............................................................................................. 30 Cloud Forest in Guatemala....................................................................... 31 Avifauna of the cloud forest .................................................................... 32 Species Description ................................................................................. 33 Pharomachrus genus ............................................................................ 33 Pharomachrus mocinno ........................................................................ 37 Morphological description ................................................................... 39 Natural History .................................................................................... 42 Cultural importance.............................................................................. 46 Pharomachrus mocinno as a flagship species ........................................ 53 Ecological communities ........................................................................... 54 Definition ............................................................................................ 54 Acoustic communities .........................................................................
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