Food habits of the alpine swift on two continents: intra-and interspecific comparisons

• Autores: Charles Collins, José Luis Tella Escobedo, Brian D. Colahan
• Localización: Ardeola, ISSN 0570-7358, Vol. 56, Nº. 2, 2009, págs. 259-269
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The prey brought by alpine swifts Tachymarptis melba to their chicks in Switzerland, Spain and South Africa included a wide variety of arthropods, principally insects but also spiders. Insects comprised 10 orders and 79 families, the Homoptera, Diptera and Hymenoptera being the most often consumed. The assessment of geographical variation in the diet was complicated by the great variability among the individual supplies of prey. Prey size varied between 1.3 and 29.6 mm, differing significantly in the median prey size of the three populations (5.12 - 8.81 mm) according to the intraspecif ic variation in size of alpine swifts. In an interspecific comparison, prey size correlated positively with body size in seven species of swifts.