OF SPECIES 289 Birds , Montane forest , State of Rio de Janeiro , Southeastern Brazil

Field surveys in montane Atlantic forest of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, provided a list of 82 bird species in four sites visited. Our protocol relied on standardized use of mist nets and observations. The birds recorded include 40 Atlantic forest endemics, three globally and two nationally Vulnerable species, and two regionally Endangered species. Data on species elevation are included and discussed. This work enhances baseline knowledge of these species to assist future studies in these poorly understood, but biologically important areas.


Introduction
The Atlantic forest is a global priority for conservation (Myers et al. 2000).Rio de Janeiro state resides in this biome, and has more threatened birds than anywhere else in the continental Americas (Manne et al. 1999;Harris et al. 2005;Jenkins and Pimm 2006).
However, some habitats of the Atlantic forest are poorly known, such as the montane forests, including the elfin forests that hold such rare Atlantic forest endemics as the Grey-winged Cotinga (Tijuca condita Snow, 1980), which may be at risk from climate change that could cause habitat displacement.
The Grey-winged Cotinga, endemic to the state of Rio de Janeiro, was the target of a recent expedition into the montane forests of the region (Alves et al. 2008).That expedition doubled the known number of localities of this species, and produced many new records for other Atlantic forest birds.Here, we provide a list of the species recorded during surveys of the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, including the elfin forest habitat of T. condita.

Study site and Methods
Field surveys: Field surveys took place mainly in the steep central mountains of Rio de Janeiro state (Figure 1).This region retains good quality forest, including elfin forest, and has the most continuous well-preserved remnant of Atlantic forest in the state.Surveys occurred at four locations, each of which had montane forest, and usually elfin forest.
Araras Biological Reserve is a state conservation unit located between Serra dos Órgãos National Park and Serra do Tinguá Biological Reserve (Figure 1).Fazenda Itatiba is within Três Picos State Park.Both sites are part of the Montane Central Region, covered mainly by Montane Atlantic Forest.The Fazenda Boa Esperança site is between Três Picos and Desengano State Park, but more than 30 km from both of these protected areas.The Desengano State Park is located more than 50 km from all other sites, with the forest being currently isolated due to deforestation in surrounding areas.All of these sites are part of a once continuous forest with one of the highest biodiversity levels in the world (Rocha et al. 2003), including many threatened species (Alves et al. 2000).December 2003, MASA, MAR, MdeLB, AS).In the last site, the team left after c. 40 hours due to inclement weather.In Itatiba, we spent an extra day also due to bad weather.Surveys included visual searches, mist netting, and audio recordings, all geo-referenced using GPS.Each site had altitudinal records taken using a hand pocket altimeter.We used standardized field protocols in each site.Five mist nets (12 x 2.5 m, 32 mm mesh) were exposed for 7 hours per day starting in early morning on two subsequent days, with a total of 14 hours per site (except in Desengano, where due to bad weather we had only 4 hours of nets exposed on the first day).The birds captured were banded with rings donated by Centro Nacional de Pesquisa para Conservação das Aves Silvestres (CEMAVE).No birds were collected.Tape recordings and playback of species were made using a SONY TCM 5000 EV tape recorder with a uni-directional microphone Sennheiser ME66.We also used an iPod to help with bird sound identification in the field.The audio recordings will be deposited in Laboratório de Bioacústica da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
We obtained digital maps of protected areas for the region from IBAMA (2008).We categorized species' threat status using the IUCN Red List (IUCN 2007), the Brazilian Red List (Machado et al. 2005) and the Rio de Janeiro Red List (Alves et al. 2000) of Threatened Species.(Portaria No. 856, 27 Nov 2003) for international participation in the research.

Results and Discussion
In the four sites, we found a total of 82 species, with 40 Atlantic forest endemics, three Vulnerable, and six Near-threatened species at a global level; two Vulnerable species at the national level; two Endangered, and four Probably Endangered species at the regional level.At Araras we recorded 46 bird species (21 endemics, two Vulnerable), at Fazenda Itatiba, 21 species (10 endemics, one Vulnerable), at Fazenda Boa Esperança, 35 species (19 endemics), and at Desengano State Park 35 species (17 endemics, one Vulnerable).The full list of species for each site is in Table 1.While the total number of species recorded in the four sites may appear low, one must consider that high altitudes hold less area, and therefore are predicted to have lower numbers of species due to the species-area relationship (Pimm and Askins 1995).
Araras had the highest total number of species and threatened species, including T. condita and Sporophila frontalis (Verreaux, 1869).This was one of only two records of T. condita outside the sites of the original expedition that discovered this species in the wild (Scott and Brooke 1993), and it was recorded within the expected altitudinal range (Alves et al. 2008).For 12 species, the present study recorded the altitudinal range of species to elevations more than 200 meters higher than those published in Parker et al. (1996), with nine of them recorded more than 300 meters higher: Tinamus solitarius (Vieillot, 1819), Pionus maximiliani (Kuhl, 1820), Veniliornis maculifrons (Spix, 1824), Drymophila malura (Temminck, 1825) 1).For one species, Oreophylax moreirae (Miranda-Ribeiro, 1906), the range was recorded to a lower elevation (191 m below the 2000 m cited in Parker et al. 1996).However, Mello-Junior et al. (1998), recorded O. moreirae at 1850 m (range 1850 to 2000 m), a similar elevation to where we recorded the species in the present study, and this information is also included in del Hoyo et al. (2003).Although the Parker at al. database is sometimes questioned in terms of up to date sources of altitudinal data, other comparably thorough databases for birds are unavailable, with more recent records for species usually scattered in the literature.Therefore, we used Parker's et al. (1996) database as a first reference.
For the 13 species previously mentioned as having extensions to their elevation range, we include data from Parker et al. (1996) and other elevation references for those species in Table 2.We did not find information for every species in the volumes of Handbook of the Birds of the World or in Ridgely andTudor (1989, 1994).Buzzeti (2000) and Scott and Brooke (1985) had elevation data for most of the species in Table 2 and their database was obtained in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
In Rio de Janeiro, montane and elfin forests exist as small islands at high elevations.They house many Atlantic forest endemic birds, including some restricted only to the highest elevations, such as T. condita (Alves et al. 2008).In this state, as in many tropical locations, a major obstacle to protecting biodiversity is our rudimentary understanding of where species live.It is likely that these four sites, and forests with similar characteristics, hold other endemic plant and animal species new to science or with unexpected distributions.Our efforts contribute towards filling the distributional gaps.Our data may also allow the monitoring of changes in altitudinal range caused by climate change.
- -------------- ----------------Table 1. Bird species recorded during fieldwork at each of the four montane Atlantic Forest sites.Each site label includes the geographic coordinates and elevation of the mist nets.We include species detected around these sites and above 1200 m.Species presence at a site is indicated by: C = capture, V = visual, and A = auditory, and absence by a dash.IUCN (G) (IUCN 2007), Brazil (N) (Machado et al. 2005) and Rio de Janeiro (R) (Alves et al. 2000) Red Lists status of the species are indicated by EN (Endangered), VU (Vulnerable), NT (Near Threatened).In the regional list (R), PE = probably endangered.The systematic order is according to CBRO (2008).Endendemic to the Atlantic forest according to Bencke et al. (2006).REBIO = Biological Reserve.----------------Table 2. Elevation data (in m) for species recorded in the current study with altitudinal range to elevations more or less than 200 m higher than those published in Parker et al. (1996), and others references.Blank cells mean no information and not listed.