Knipolegus franciscanus (Caatinga Black-Tyrant)

Vasconcelos, Marcelo Ferreira de, 2018, First avifaunal survey of a Cerrado dry forest enclave on the right bank of the São Francisco River, Minas Gerais, Brazil, with insights on geographic variation of some species, Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 58, pp. 1-18 : 8-9

Knipolegus franciscanus (Caatinga Black-Tyrant)

The Caatinga Black-Tyrant was a frequent species in the study area (IFL = 15.0%). In the same area, Marcos A. Raposo observed c. 50 individuals of this species in a single hour of field sampling in November 1995 ( Kirwan et al., 2004),despite we never found it in such abundance (see below). The majority of records of habitat use were obtained in dry forests or their edges (77.1%, n = 27), despite we also observed it in the vegetation growing on limestone outcrop (20%, n = 7) and in gallery forest (2.9%, n = 1). Among all individuals observed during our sampling effort of 31 days (n = 43), the majority were males (90.7%), while only 9.3% were represented by females. We do not know if females are actually less abundant than males or if they present a more secretive behavior, which, together with their more cryptic plumage pattern, make them less detectable than males. In a proportional rate, we obtained eight specimens represented by seven males (MCNA 4966, MCNA 5049, MCNA 5055, MCNA 5180, MCNA 5227, MCNA 5230, MCNA 5268) and a single female (MCNA 5191).

Nothing is known about the species’ breeding biology, but based on measurements of testicle size of the seven collected males, breeding appears to occur during the end of dry season and the beginning of the rainy season, between September and November ( Table 3).