Ecology of mixed-species flocks of birds across gradients in the Neotropics

Abstract

Mixed-species flocks of birds have been studied for more than a century, but investigation efforts are historically unbalanced towards certain types of habitats, such as woodlands and lowland forests. Here we provide a first glance of bird flocks' patterns across different gradients in recent studies conducted within the Neotropics. We summarize a symposium where a series of independent studies that approached the topic, some of them making use of techniques that were seldom applied in previous decades in Neotropical systems. We discuss bird flocks' patterns across a latitudinal gradient, social network patterns in bird flocks' across elevational gradients in local and regional scale, and, finally, patterns of flocking response to different levels of human disturbance. Altogether, these studies offer a larger and diverse panorama of possible patterns of response and diversity of mixed-species flocks of birds in the Neotropical region, and provide a rich ground where future studies with bird flocks in the Neotropics may rely on.