Touit surdus (Kuhl, 1820)

Pereira, Glauco Alves, Dantas, Sidnei de Melo, Silveira, Luís Fábio, Roda, Sônia Aline, Albano, Ciro, Sonntag, Frederico Acaz, Leal, Sergio, Periquito, Mauricio Cabral, Malacco, Gustavo Bernardino & Lees, Alexander Charles, 2014, Status of the globally threatened forest birds of northeast Brazil, Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia (São Paulo) 54 (14), pp. 177-194 : 185

Touit surdus (Kuhl, 1820) ,

Golden-tailed Parrotlet (IUCN: VU)

Despite its relatively ample distribution in the Atlantic Forest – stretching from Paraíba to São Paulo ( Collar, 1997; Forshaw, 2010), this species is only known from only 12 localities in the PCE (Roda, 2003) with Silveira et al. (2003a) finding this parrotlet in 5 of 15 surveyed forest fragments ( Fig. 3 ). Our fieldwork produced additional records from 13 localities in Pernambuco, Paraíba and Alagoas ( Table 2). As with the preceding species, this parrotlet may be preadapt- ed to life in fragmented landscapes as these and other psittacids have to track spatio-temporally variable fruit resources (e.g., Lees & Peres, 2009). Parrotlets in the genus Touit have very poor survivorship in captivity and are thus not highly sought after by bird traffickers ( Collar, 2000). A pair was observed attending a nest in an arboreal termitarium in the RPPN Fazenda Pacatuba, municipality of Sapé, Paraíba. The preference for nesting in arboreal termitaria frees members of this genus from dependence on tree hollows, required by many parrot species.These may be a population-limiting factor in degraded and regenerating forests with few large old trees (e.g., Cockle et al., 2010).

Figures

FIGURE 3: Patch occupancy for 13 threatened species of the PCE between 2003-2014, dark grey circles denote critically endangered (CR) species, light grey circles endangered (EN) species and white circles vulnerable (VU) species.The white triangles are used for two species – Cichlocolaptes mazarbanetti and Automolus lammi which have yet to be evaluated by the IUCN.