Insects found in birds’ nests from Argentina. Furnarius rufus (Gmelin, 1788) (Aves: Furnariidae) and their inquiline birds, the true hosts of Acanthocrios furnarii (Cordero & Vogelsang, 1928) (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Cimicidae) 2700
Author
Turienzo, Paola
Author
Iorio, Osvaldo Di
text
Zootaxa
2010
2010-12-03
2700
1
112
journal article
11755334
Ic.
Mammalia
Mammals and/or signs of their activity (fecal pellets and food remains) were found in 10 (3.98 %) of the 251 examined nests (
Table 1
, Appendix II).
Didelphis albiventris
Lund, 1840
[Marsupialia:
Didelphidae
]
Two previous records of
Didelphis albiventris
were made (Appendix Ia). Nevertheless, very probably these records were because of young opossums (an adult opossum can not enter the narrow entrance and the opossum is larger than the volume of the breeding chamber) (
Fig. 4
). In fact, two young opossums were found, one from
Entre Ríos
(ER # 1) and the second from
Buenos Aires
(BA # 123). In the first case, the nest in which it was living was totally clean and devoid of any material. In the second, the original bed of grasses of
F. rufus
was still present.
FIGURE 34.
Eggs of
Passer domesticus
inside the nests of
Furnarius rufus
. Letters and numbers correspond to the nests in the Appendix IIc.
FIGURE 35.
Eggs of
Sicalis flaveola pelzelni
(BA # 27, BA # 28, BA # 65, BA # 125, BA # 135) and
Troglodytes aedon
(BA # 25) inside the nests of
Furnarius rufus
.
Graomys griseoflavus
(Waterhouse, 1837)
[
Rodentia
:
Muridae
] (
Fig. 32
)
Graomys griseoflavus
is an arboreal species, previously found in stick nests of other
Furnariidae
birds in
Argentina
(
Hershkovitz 1962
). One nest of
F. rufus
from
La Pampa
was inhabited by three individual [MACN] of
G. griseoflavus
(Appendix IIc). The nest of this rodent is made with very small pieces of grasses (probably from the bed of
F. rufus
), mixed with a great amount of small hairs and remains of food (broken endocarps of
Prosopis caldenia
Burkart
[
Mimosaceae
] in the nests from
La Pampa
) (
Fig. 32
).
Unidentified rodents
In other cases, the rodents were not found or escaped, but their presence can be detected by fecal pellets, food remains (Appendix IIc), and/or the particular odour of the materials. Apparently, one nest of
F.rufus
was cleaned by the rodent because no remains of the bed of grasses were found (SF # 1). In a second case, the bed of grasses of
F. rufus
was covered by a layer of open endocarps of
Melia azedarach
L. [
Meliaceae
], mixed with fecal pellets (BA # 107). In a third nest, a small rodent, probably young (escaped), builds its own nest with the grasses of one abandoned nest of
P. domesticus
with five rotten eggs (BA # 141). In a fourth nest (BA # 171) three lactants were captured inside a nest of grasses, hairs, and yarns, recently built with the bed of
F. rufus
and a nest of
S. f. pelzelni
.