Macaw

Abstract: Macaws and parrots were important birds in prehistoric Mimbres-area communities by A.D. 1000. Scarlet macaws (Ara macao) apparently were imported into the area from the tropical lowlands in Mexico, but one other species each of macaw (Ara militaris) and parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) probably could have been obtained from much closer natural ranges. Macaws in particular evidently were of special, perhaps ceremonial, importance as indicated by consistent age at death, probably reflecting sacrifice in the spring, and by deliberate intramural burial, often in special rooms in the community. The sacrificing of macaws and the season in which it occurred were consistent in Mimbres and contemporaneous sites and began a pattern that continued in the Southwest perhaps until historic times.

Abstract: Despite the fact that parrots (Psitacifformes) are generalist apex frugivores, they have largely been considered plant antagonists and thus neglected as seed dispersers of their food plants. Internal dispersal was investigated by searching for seeds in faeces opportunistically collected at communal roosts, foraging sites and nests of eleven parrot species in different habitats and biomes in the Neotropics. Multiple intact seeds of seven plant species of five families were found in a variable proportion of faeces from four parrot species. The mean number of seeds of each plant species per dropping ranged between one and about sixty, with a maximum of almost five hundred seeds from the cacti Pilosocereus pachycladus in a single dropping of Lear’s Macaw (Anodorhynchus leari). All seeds retrieved were small (<3 mm) and corresponded to herbs and relatively large, multiple-seeded fleshy berries and infrutescences from shrubs, trees and columnar cacti, often also dispersed by stomatochory. An overview of the potential constraints driving seed dispersal suggest that, despite the obvious size difference between seeds dispersed by endozoochory and stomatochory, there is no clear difference in fruit size depending on the dispersal mode. Regardless of the enhanced or limited germination capability after gut transit, a relatively large proportion of cacti seeds frequently found in the faeces of two parrot species were viable according to the tetrazolium test and germination experiments. The conservative results of our exploratory sampling and a literature review clearly indicate that the importance of parrots as endozoochorous dispersers has been largely under-appreciated due to the lack of research systematically searching for seeds in their faeces. We encourage the evaluation of seed dispersal and other mutualistic interactions mediated by parrots before their generalized population declines contribute to the collapse of key ecosystem processes.