Estado de conocimiento de las aves de aguas continentales de Chile

Abstract

As an overview, this article presents the species composition, distributions, conservation status and some aspects of biology of aquatic birds from Chile. This avifauna is constituted by 133 species, sorted in 69 genera, 21 families and 10 orders. The group represented by the higher number of species is the Order Charadriiformes (51 species), with a high proportion of species inhabiting estuarine ecotones. In freshwater environments the group with the higher richness is the Order Anseriformes (29 species). The distribution of the species richness is concordant with the trends of representation for each Order in South America. According to this revision, great part of registers for Chile are sporadics (28 spp) or regular migrants (13 spp), and only the 69% of the total can be considered residents in Chile. According to the conservation status, a total of 25 species is considered in some system of classification, of which a species, Numenius borealis (esquimo curlew), is extinct. According to registries of lasts 50 years, the austral rail (Rallus antarcticus) is an extinct species in Central Chile, being represented by few populations in Southern Chile and Argentina. In Chile endemic species of aquatic birds do not exist. Nevertheless, when considering like analysis areas the Chilean ecoregions, exist two zones with a high number of exclusive species: the Desertica ecoregion with 9.1 % endemism, and Tropical or Puna with a 7.6% of endemic species. Although in the Mediterranea and Oceánica ecoregions exists a high number of species, these show few exclusive taxa (3% and 2.3% respectively). The distributional, ecological and poorly studied aspects on the Chilean aquatic birds are discussed.