Artificial nest experiments in a fragmented neotropical cloud forest

We conducted artificial nest experiments in a Neotropical montane forest in the eastern Andes, Colombia, in order to test the effect of placing the nests in forest fragments or continuous forests, at two nest heights and for two different climatic seasons. Predation was not consistently different between nests placed in fragments and controls. However, we found that nests on the ground had a higher daily probability of being predated than nests in the understory. Also, daily nest mortality rate (DNM) was higher in the wet season than in the dry season. Most of the predated nests were attributed to mammals (56%), and predation occurred mostly on the ground (78%). Our estimates of DNM are quite low (= 0.023) and similar to another Neotropical montane forest and other Neotropical sites. Comparisons of DNM between Neotropical and temperate sites suggests that predation rates are similar. Our results suggest that fragmentation may not have a large negative impact in nest predation for bird populations breeding in fragments compared to other sites in tropical and temperate regions. ?? The Neotropical Ornithological Society.