Post date: Sep 8, 2015 4:10:46 PM
Abstract — During the last 15 years ornithology and birdwatching has been rapidly growing in Colombia. This has led to many developments, which have improved greatly our knowledge of the birds inhabiting the country. We used data from BioMap and the literature to answer the question of how many bird species there are in Colombia. We plotted the number of new species reported and accumulated total species per decade against time and developed a series of linear and non–linear models. We fitted a linear model to the new species reported per decade. Otherwise, we fitted the Verhulst logistic growth model to the total accumulated species per decade, conducting a series of sensitivity analyses changing initial parameter values until we reached sound results. We validated models using data on the number of species in Colombia from ProAves, the Atlas of the Birds of Colombia and other sources from the literature, and differences to these data to produce a series of new adjusted models. Results suggest that the period between 1860 and 1920 was very important for new discoveries in the country. Verhulst lower and upper limit models predict very small change on accumulated total species between the decades of 2020s and 2080s; reaching values of ≈ 1,635 and 1,787 species respectively. Adjusted models, using the upper limit Verhulst model and the difference to ProAves and the Atlas of the Birds of Colombia, reach maximum values of ≈ 1,931 and 1,979 species respectively. Our linear models on new species reported per decade predict that there will be no more new species reports for the country between the decades of 2020s and 2070s. Models developed in this brief note are simple first approximation to answer our initial question and also to estimate when we can expect there will be no more new species reports in the country. Incorporating future developments in Colombian ornithology in the following decades will allow us to fine–tuning these models.
Keywords — bird species; Colombia; BioMap; ProAves; Verhulst model
Notulae Ornitologicae Columbianae 3 – PDF
Supplementary material – PDF