Fig 15 - uploaded by José Raúl Vázquez
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8 Juvenile of mottled owl (Strix virgata) in El Silencio Reserve, Suchiate, Chiapas, 25 April 2014 (Photograph Noé Jiménez Lang)
Source publication
Mexico has 34 owl species, but little is known about their ecology particularly for tropical species. Of the 12 genera of owl species in the country, the genera Megascops and Glaucidium are the most diverse with eight species each. Strix has five species and Asio four. Four species are extensively distributed in the country, while others have distr...
Citations
by analyzing 358 pellets, identifying 850 prey items. Invertebrates constituted 90% of prey items, which mostly included insects (85%); beetles were the most common insects found in pellets (70%). Vertebrates made up 84% of consumed weight, of which 83% were mammals. Most of the mammals were cricetid rodents (41%). Niche breadth based on the numerical and weight percentage confirmed the Burrowing Owl as a generalist species with mean values per year ranging between 0.65 and 0.82. Additionally, there was a strong association between the weight of rodent species in winter. This association was mainly driven by changes in composition and frequency of these prey species during the second winter, probably caused by high annual rainfall. The second season also showed a statistically significant narrower niche (Ro = 0.96) and the smallest overlap (0.45 vs. 0.76) among the three winters.
