Re: Ceratonykus braincase described

[Dr Ronald Orenstein <ron.orenstein@rogers.com>]

My climacterid data are in Canada, and I am in Malaysia until June 4 - so if 
anyone really wants to know please jog my memory in June!

Ronald Orenstein 
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, ON
Canada L5L 3W2

On 2011-05-01, at 2:34 PM, Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dr Ronald Orenstein <ron.orenstein@rogers.com> wrote:
> 
>> With respect to myrmecophagous birds, there are certainly birds that eat 
>> ants as a major part of their diet. I beleive this is true of flickers 
>> (Colaptes) and it is certainly true of Australian treecreepers
>> (Climacteridae) which I studied (including stomach content analyses) for my 
>> doctoral thesis - these birds are certainly not flightless, though most of 
>> their flights are from high on one tree to lower (or to
>> the ground) on the next. I have no data on their metabolic rates.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks Ron.  Yep, the Northern Flicker (_Colaptes auratus_) was found
> to include nearly 90% of ants (Formicidae) in its diet - the rest was
> mostly spiders and scale insects (Coccidae) (Otvos & Stark, 1985).
> I'll defer to you for the Climacteridae data.   :-)
> 
> 
> I should have specified *large* myrmecophagous birds (i.e., larger
> than 1 kg).  Small mammals (under 1 kg) that specialize in eating ants
> or termites can have comparatively high body temperatures and high
> basal rates of metabolism (McNab, 1984) - such as those species of
> elephant shrew (Macroscelidea) in which the diet is mostly made up of
> termites.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Tim