2025/06/01 by José‐María García‐Carrasco, Clive Richard Barlow, Carlos Camacho · 1 voice
Environmental Science · #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #Avian ecology and behavior #Wildlife-Road Interactions and Conservation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/ece3.71656
openalex publication_date 2025/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
ABSTRACT The coexistence of nocturnal bird species in tropical ecosystems remains poorly understood, primarily due to the difficulty of detecting and monitoring these elusive organisms. We studied the spatial distribution of two ecologically similar nightjar species, the Long‐tailed Nightjar Caprimulgus climacurus and Standard‐winged Nightjar Caprimulgus longipennis , in The Gambia. Under the assumption that competition is particularly intense among closely related species, we aim to investigate the degree of spatial overlapping between the two nightjar species as a preliminary test of spatial niche partitioning in nightjars. During the early dry season of 2021, we recorded the location of nightjars sitting on dirt tracks at night inside and outside of a rice field area in the Central River Region in The Gambia. We analysed the abundance, density and spatial distribution pattern of nightjars to determine if the two species segregate in space along tracks or occur together. The density of Long‐tailed Nightjar was higher than that of Standard‐winged Nightjar (9:1), and density was higher inside the rice field (4.41 nightjars/km) than outside of it (0.58 nightjars/km). The spatial analysis suggested that both species tended to co‐occur at the landscape scale (> 500 m) and avoided each other over finer spatial scales (< 500 m). This study identifies, for the first time, the potential for niche partitioning and spatial segregation at the community level in caprimulgids, although larger scale studies are needed to confirm the generality of the observed patterns. Moreover, our research highlights the magnitude of the utilisation of rice fields for foraging by nightjars in this novel study of this habitat type in The Gambia. Understanding the role of land use management patterns and the interaction of poorly studied nocturnal birds in (sub)tropical areas has important implications to support decision‐making in species conservation planning and land management.