Boris Tinoco

Universidad del Azuay (UDA) · Biología

The Blue-throated Hillstar Oreotrochilus cyanolaemus is a recently described hummingbird endemic to the southern Andes of Ecuador. This "Critically Endangered" species faces multiple conservation problems; thus, acquiring basic ecological information is a key step for guiding sound and integral conservation actions. We performed a series of expedit...

Birds in mixed-species flocks benefit from greater foraging efficiency and reduced predation, but also face costs related to competition and activity matching. Because this cost–benefit trade-off is context-dependent (e.g. abiotic conditions and habitat quality), the structure of flocks is expected to vary along elevational, latitudinal and disturb...

One of the greatest threats to biodiversity is land use change. Habitat alteration can have strong impacts on functional diversity, i.e., the range of biological traits within a suite of organisms. Mixed species avian flocks are integral to maintaining both taxonomic and functional diversity in tropical forests as they provide participants with gre...

Presentamos las memorias de la VII Reunión Ecuatoriana de Ornitología (VII REO), desarrollada en Cuenca, en 27–31 de julio de 2022. La VII REO contó con cuatro charlas magistrales, un simposio sobre áreas clave para la biodiversidad en Ecuador, 54 presentaciones orales y pósters, un conversatorio sobre anillamiento de aves en el país y seis tallere...

Endozoochory, the dispersal of seeds by animal ingestion, is the most dominant mode of seed dispersal in tropical forests and is a key process shaping current and future forest dynamics. However, it remains largely unknown how endozoochory is associated with environmental conditions at regional and local scales. Here, we investigated the effects of...

El proyecto “Respuestas espacio-temporales de las comunidades de aves a gradientes ambientales en el sur del Ecuador” estudió la distribución de la avifauna en paisajes montanos de la provincia del Azuay. Las aves son uno de los grupos más representativos de vertebrados, y tienen un rol clave en varios procesos que mantienen el funcionamiento de lo...

Violet-throated Metaltail Metallura baroni is a threatened hummingbird species, endemic to the Andes of southern Ecuador. Details about the reproductive biology of this species are largely unknown. In this manuscript, we describe the nest, eggs, and nestlings’ development based on nine nests found along with the Cuenca-Molleturo-Naranjal road, in C...

El proyecto “Respuestas espacio-temporales de las comunidades de aves a gradientes ambientales en el sur del Ecuador” estudia las interacciones entre plantas y colibríes para entender los factores que promueven estas interacciones mutualistas de polinización. Los ecosistemas montanos interandinos de la provincia del Azuay han sido fuertemente trans...

Pollinator foraging fidelity (i.e., consistent and repeated visitation to a particular plant species or area) is poorly understood for most bee species, but is important information for both the conservation of plant and pollinator species and the ecosystem services they provide to humans. We used plant–pollinator surveys and mark–recapture of flor...

Biodiversity and ecosystem functions are highly threatened by global change. It has been proposed that geodiversity can be used as an easy-to-measure surrogate of biodiversity to guide conservation management. However, so far, there is mixed evidence to what extent geodiversity can predict biodiversity and ecosystem functions at the regional scale...

As the pace of environmental change increases, there is an urgent need for quantitative data revealing the temporal dynamics of local communities in tropical areas. Here, we quantify the stability of avian assemblages in the highly threatened, but poorly studied, Andean biodiversity hot spot. We evaluated the temporal variation in species richness...

We describe basic information about the nesting ecology of the recently discovered Blue-throated Hummingbird (Oreotrochilus cyanolaemus) based on a single nest found in Cerro de Arcos in the high Andes of southwestern Ecuador. The nest was located inside a small cave, attached to a rock wall, and was constructed with moss, rootlets, twigs, dry leav...

The planning and implementation of restoration in the tropical Andes has yet to incorporate functional attributes of ecosystems such as pollination. Mutualistic network approaches can be especially useful for this purpose. For example, within networks of hummingbirds and their pollinated plants, most interactions occur on a small number of plant sp...

en Understanding the responses of species interactions to land-use change is a key challenge in ecology and conservation. In the tropical Andes, a large proportion of birds interact with other bird species and create networks of mixed-species flocks; however, the widespread effects of land-use change in the region raise concerns about the alteratio...

Functional traits can determine pairwise species interactions, such as those between plants and pollinators. However, the effects of biogeography and evolutionary history on trait‐matching and trait‐mediated resource specialization remain poorly understood. We compiled a database of 93 mutualistic hummingbird‐plant networks (including 181 hummingbi...

Exploring mechanisms that determine species coexistence is a key step to understanding community organization and patterns of distribution of biodiversity. Antpittas of the genus Grallaria offer a great opportunity to quantify mechanisms of coexistence among closely related species. They are terrestrial insectivores with specialized foraging techni...

In pollination systems with a diverse community of floral visitors, qualitative and quantitative variations in pollination effectiveness can lead to a system in which higher effectiveness results from the synergetic contribution of multiple pollinators. By employing a series of field and laboratory experiments in the south Andes of Ecuador, we comp...

In pollination systems with a diverse community of floral visitors, qualitative and quantitative variations in pollination effectiveness can lead to a system in which higher effectiveness results from the synergetic contribution of multiple pollinators. By employing a series of field and laboratory experiments in the south Andes of Ecuador, we comp...

Interactions between species are influenced by different ecological mechanisms, such as morphological matching, phenological overlap and species abundances. How these mechanisms explain interaction frequencies across environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Consequently, we also know little about the mechanisms that drive the geographical...

The change in the distribution range is a common response of various species facing the effects of anthropogenic global change. We used new distribution records of birds reported during the last two decades from the Ecuadorian part of the Tumbesian region (western Ecuador and northwestern Peru) available through a bibliographic review, together wit...

La Lista Roja es una herramienta para las instituciones de manejo y científicas para determinar las prioridades de conservación. La anterior versión fue realizada en 2002, en donde solo se incorporó 247 especies. La IUCN recomienda que la actualización se realice cada 5-10 años. Por lo tanto, la actualización de la Lista Roja de las Aves del Ecuado...

La Lista Roja es una herramienta para las instituciones de manejo y científicas para determinar las prioridades de conservación. La anterior versión fue realizada en 2002, en donde solo se incorporó 247 especies. La IUCN recomienda que la actualización se realice cada 5-10 años. Por lo tanto, la actualización de la Lista Roja de las Aves del Ecuado...

Animal mortality due to collisions with vehicles in roads are a major threat to biodiversity; however, there is still much to learn about this problem in the tropical Andes hot spot. We describe general patterns of bird mortality associated with the presence of a road that bisects Cajas National Park (CNP), in the southern high Andes of Ecuador. We...

Abundant pollinators are often more generalised than rare pollinators. This could be because abundant species have more chance encounters with potential interaction partners. On the other hand, generalised species could have a competitive advantage over specialists, leading to higher abundance. Determining the direction of the abundance–generalisat...

Many studies have investigated how habitat fragmentation affects the taxonomic and functional diversity of species assemblages. However, the joint effects of habitat fragmentation and environmental conditions on taxonomic and functional diversity, for instance across elevational gradients, have largely been neglected so far. In this study, we compa...

The probability of long-term persistence of a population is strongly determined by adult survival rates, but estimates of survival are currently lacking for most species of birds in the tropical Andes, a global biodiversity hotspot. We calculated apparent survival rates of birds in the Ecuadorian tropical Andes using a moderately long-term (11 yr)...

Morphological trait matching between species affects resource partitioning in mutualistic systems. Yet, the determinants of spatial variation in trait matching remain largely unaddressed. Here, we generate a hypothesis that is based on the geographical distributions of species morphologies. To illustrate our hypothesis, as a study system we use hum...

Abundant pollinators are often more generalised than rare pollinators. This could be because abundance drives generalisation: neutral effects suggest that more abundant species will be more generalised simply because they have more chance encounters with potential interaction partners. On the other hand, generalisation could drive abundance, as gen...

Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of species assemblages is a main challenge in ecology. The mechanisms that shape species assemblages and their temporal fluctuations along tropical elevational gradients are particularly poorly understood. Here, we examined the spatio-temporal dynamics of bird assemblages along an elevational gradient...

Akaike’s information criterion of models testing main and interaction effects of elevation and season on bird abundance, evenness and richness. (PDF)

Estimates of random effects for models testing the effects of temperature, precipitation and resource availability on the temporal fluctuations in bird communities. (PDF)

Species accumulation curves. (PDF)

Effects of temperature, precipitation and resource availability on the temporal fluctuations in bird evenness and bird species richness. (PDF)

Effects of temperature, precipitation and resource type on the temporal fluctuations in abundance of feeding guilds. (PDF)

List of 241 bird species recorded and their feeding guilds. (PDF)

Climate data of the study region. (PDF)

Estimates of random effects for models testing the effects of elevation and season on bird communities. (PDF)

Land use change modifies the environment at multiple spatial scales, and is a main driver of species declines and deterioration of ecosystem services. However, most of the research on the effects of land use change has focused on taxonomic diversity, while functional diversity, an important predictor of ecosystem services, is often neglected. We ex...

Red List of Bird of mainland Ecuador

Red List of the Birds of Galapagos, Ecuador

p>Las plantas del género Axinaea (familia Melastomataceae) presentan un novedoso sistema de polinización recientemente descubierto, que involucra aves que tradicionalmente no son consideradas polinizadoras (específicamente de las familias Thraupidae, Passerellidae y Fringillidae). Contribuimos con información sobre la ecología de este mecanismo de...

There is still much to learn about pollination ecology in areas of high species diversity, such as the Neotropical region. For example, the role of non-flying mammals in pollination is largely unknown in the Neotropical areas, despite the importance of this group in the pollination of plants in other regions. Here we report evidence for flower visi...

Geographic variation in pollination ecology is poorly documented, if at all, in many plant-pollinator systems. Great insights could be gained into the abiotic and biotic factors which impact the evolution of floral properties and their potential to lead to speciation by doing so, as both can vary naturally over the geographic range of a plant speci...

Some species benefit from anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance expanding their distribution ranges rapidly into altered areas. Given the current availability of anthropogenic landscapes in the Neotropic, it is important to document cases of species' range extensions to better understand the factors that influence their distribution. In this manuscri...

Specialization of species in interaction networks influences network stability and ecosystem functioning. Spatial and temporal variation in resource availability may provide insight into how ecological factors, such as resource abundance, and evolutionary factors, such as phylogenetically conserved morphological traits, influence specialization wit...

El Parque Nacional Cajas es un área de interés para científicos y aficionados de las aves debido principalmente a su muestra representativa de los ecosistemas andinos. Los Andes presentan altos niveles de diversidad y, a la vez, fuertes presiones ocasionadas por actividades humanas. Así, los parques nacionales son herramientas importantes para la c...

National parks are an important tool for conserving biodiversity, particularly in areas of high biodiversity and endemism such as the tropical Andes. However, national parks often face a variety of stressors related to recreation, road construction and illegal extraction of natural resources. Unfortunately, the influence of these stressors for biod...

Abstract Comparison of the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and trait dimensions of beta diversity may uncover the mechanisms that generate and maintain biodiversity, such as geographic isolation, environmental filtering, and convergent adaptation. We developed an approach to predict the relationship between environmental and geographic distance and the di...

Human-induced alteration of habitat is a major threat to biodiversity worldwide, especially in areas of high biological diversity and ende-mism. Polylepis (Rosaceae) forest, a unique forest habitat in the high Andes of South America, presently occurs as small and isolated patches in grassland dominated landscapes. We examine how the avian community...

Phylogenetic community ecology combines phylogenetic hypotheses with local species composition and functional-trait information to evaluate historical and contemporary mechanisms influencing local assemblage structure. Most studies assume that, if functional traits are conserved, then patterns of trait variation should match patterns of phylogeneti...

Reportamos nuevos datos que extienden significativamente el rango altitudinal y de distribución del Guácharo Steatornis caripensis en Ecuador. Presentamos información sobre cuatro colonias reproductivas recientemente descubiertas, dos en la vertiente occidental de los Andes (prov. Pichincha y Azuay) y dos en la vertiente oriental (prov. Napo y Zamo...

The tropical Andes rank first among the world's 25 "hotspots" of biodiversity and endemism yet are threatened and little studied. We contrast population trends in avian diversity in montane cloud forest (bosque altoandino) and similar forest degraded by the planting of introduced tree species (bosque introducido) in the Mazan Reserve, Ecuador. We d...

The Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus) is a critically endangered species in Ecuador and is threatened at the global scale. We tested three methods (feeding stations, transects, and point counts) to estimate local population size of Andean Condors in Cajas National Park (CNP) in the southern Andes of Ecuador. We conducted 128 h of observations at two f...

The Violet-throated Metaltail Metallura baroni is a high altitude hummingbird endemic to south-central Ecuador currently considered globally 'Endangered'. Here we present the first detailed assessment of its distribution, ecology and conservation. We first used a maximum entropy model (Maxent model) to create a predicted distribution for this speci...

The Tumbesian region is of global priority for biodiversity conservation due to the high levels of endemism. Despite this fact, the knowledge about avian communities is particularly deficient. A main environmental characteristic of the region is an extremely seasonal rain pattern, which leads to two highly pronounced weather seasons: wet and dry. T...

Seasonality of the bird community in the Tumbesian dry forest in south west Ecuador. – The Tumbesian region is of global priority for biodiversity conservation due to the high levels of ende-mism. Despite this fact, the knowledge about avian communities is particularly deficient. A main environmental characteristic of the region is an extremely sea...

The Tumbesian region is of global priority for biodiversity conservation due to the high levels of endemism. Despite this fact, the knowledge about avian communities is particularly deficient. A main environmental characteristic of the region is an extremely seasonal rain pattern, which leads to two highly pronounced weather seasons: wet and dry. T...