Observations on the diet of the North African houbara bustard during the non-breeding season

Bourass, Khadija; Léger, J.-F.; Zaime, Abdelkader; Qninba, Abdeljebbar; Rguibi, Hamid; Agbani, Mohammed Aziz El; Benhoussa, Abdelaziz; Hingrat, Yves

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2012.02.016

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Bourass et al . ). Ants are widely used as indicator species in biomonitoring studies due to their sensitivity to environmental changes (Agosti et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Linking plant and insect traits to understand multitrophic community structure in arid steppes

2013

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Summary1. Animal ecology could benefit from a well-defined trait-based framework, mostly applied in plant ecology, to further develop predictions of animal communities under various environmental conditions. We extended the functional approach to a multitrophic system by combining plant and ant traits in relation to environmental conditions to study the relationships between these three components. 2. We sampled plant and ant abundances along an aridity gradient in grazed and ungrazed conditions in the arid steppes of eastern Morocco. We measured five plant functional traits related to water stress and grazing resistance and six ant functional traits related to body size, dispersal and behaviour. We related each component (environment, vegetation and ants) using Mantel partial correlations to uncover the causal structure between components and using a fourthcorner analysis to describe the effects of the environment and vegetation on ant communities. 3. Results indicated that vegetation had a direct effect on ant community composition while the environment only had an indirect effect on ant community composition through vegetation structure. This result was consistent when looking at both the taxonomic and functional composition of communities, but correlations were stronger when based on taxonomic composition. Aridity was the variable most significantly linked with ant functional traits 4. Synthesis. The use of functional traits in animal ecology is relatively new, and an increase in trait-based community ecology studies that include more than one trophic level would be beneficial in identifying trait-based patterns in multitrophic communities. This new approach could become very useful in identifying mechanistic explanations of multitrophic community assembly and making predictions about their evolution under changing environmental conditions. It could also be of practical use in conservation biology in assessing habitat quality.

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“…Bourass et al . ). Ants are widely used as indicator species in biomonitoring studies due to their sensitivity to environmental changes (Agosti et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Linking plant and insect traits to understand multitrophic community structure in arid steppes

2013

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“…They show the same diet variation between regions and years, reflecting the fluctuations of food resources availability in space and time (Hingrat et al 2007b). As wild birds (Bourass et al 2012a), CBH are omnivorous and opportunistic. These results highlight that birds produced artificially in captivity and prepared for release are able to acquire their daily energetic requirements, as illustrated by observed mean post-release survival rates (52 % in autumn and 86 % in spring) and the ability of juveniles to grow, disperse and breed in the wild .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The identification and quantification of the animal and plant food in the stomach were carried out using four identification tools available at the ECWP: a herbarium, an invertebrate reference collection, a collection of invertebrate fragments and a plant epidermis reference collection (Bourass et al 2012a). Regarding the animal fraction, the totality of the fraction was analysed.…”

Section: Diet Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding the animal fraction, the totality of the fraction was analysed. For the plant fraction, we considered a randomly chosen subsample of 200 fragments per sample representative of the all fraction (see Bourass et al 2012a). Concerning the plant fraction, 7 stomachs from CBH which contained degraded plant fractions were excluded from the analysis (Table 1).…”

Section: Diet Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Mixed black and white points represent wild and released birds sampled from the same location. When more than one bird was collected from one location, the number is indicated, in white for wild and in black for released houbara RA was given by the percentage resulting from the division of the abundance of a given taxon in a stomach by the total abundance of all taxa in this stomach (Bourass et al 2012a;Hyslop 1980). Mean and standard deviation of RA were then calculated for each taxon in the two groups, wild and CBH.…”

Section: Data Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diet of released captive-bred North-African houbara bustards

Bourass

Hingrat

2015

Eur J Wildl Res

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In translocation of captive-bred animals, mortality is often significant and impedes the successful establishment of a new population. Among the numerous reasons of failure, the first requirement of a newly released individual is to keep a positive energy balance by feeding properly. Individuals may exhibit diet disorders related to stress or may have developed behavioural, physiological and anatomic capacities adapted to captive conditions, but maladaptive once in the wild. We studied the diet of wild (n=42) and captive-bred (n=32) NorthAfrican houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata) released in eastern Morocco. For this, we compared proportions and taxonomic compositions of plant and animal fractions from stomach contents. We showed that the diet of captivebred houbara is similar to wild individuals. The ability of captive-bred birds to shift from captive to a natural diet is probably facilitated by an innate omnivorous and opportunistic feeding behaviour and a likely learning period in contact with wild conspecifics.

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Precipitation and female experience are major determinants of the breeding performance of Canarian houbara bustards

Alonso,

Abril-Colón,

Ucero

et al. 2024

Wildlife Biology

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Precipitation is one of the main triggers of reproduction in desert‐breeding birds. The unpredictability of rainfall patterns in arid environments has led species to adapt their breeding effort to episodes of abundant food after rainfall. The response is not the same for all individuals in a population, and may vary especially with the age and experience of each female. Here we investigate the effects of precipitation, temperature, body size and breeding experience, among other variables, on reproductive parameters of 20 females of Canarian houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae), an endangered desert bird endemic of the eastern Canary Islands. Precipitation and breeding experience were the main determinants of female breeding performance. Higher rainfall determined an increase in nesting rate, and earlier autumn rains caused an advancement of nesting to October, allowing the breeding season to be extended to eight months. This favoured an extraordinary increase in productivity in more rainy breeding seasons, with 15 times more females nesting in the two most rainy winters than in dry years. In addition, females with more breeding experience showed a higher tendency to breed, higher nest attempt and fledging success, and longer breeding season, which allowed them to rear more chicks. A female even double brooded successfully in the same season, which, considering that chicks remain with the mother for up to six months, indicates a great capacity to optimise reproductive investment, by adapting to highly variable rainfall regimes. In recent decades, the eastern Canary Islands have undergone a process of aridification, and climate models predict a medium‐term increase in the frequency and duration of drought periods. Thus, Canarian houbaras are particularly vulnerable to climate change, so measures are urgently needed to reduce their mortality and improve the quality of their habitat, in order to favour their reproduction and prevent their extinction.

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Observations on the diet of the North African houbara bustard during the non-breeding season

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

Linking plant and insect traits to understand multitrophic community structure in arid steppes

Linking plant and insect traits to understand multitrophic community structure in arid steppes

Diet of released captive-bred North-African houbara bustards

Precipitation and female experience are major determinants of the breeding performance of Canarian houbara bustards

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