Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Charadriiformes > Laridae > Rynchops > Rynchops niger

Rynchops niger (Black Skimmer)

Synonyms: Rhynchops niger niger; Rynchops nigra
Language: French; Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The black skimmer (Rynchops niger) is a tern-like seabird, one of three very similar birds species in the skimmer family. It breeds in North and South America. Northern populations winter in the warmer waters of the Caribbean and the tropical and subtropical Pacific coasts, but the South American races make only shorter movements in response to annual floods which extend their feeding areas in the river shallows.
View Wikipedia Record: Rynchops niger

Infraspecies

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
22
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 8.07237
EDGE Score: 2.20523

Attributes

Clutch Size [8]  4
Clutches / Year [6]  1
Fledging [2]  35 days
Incubation [6]  23 days
Maximum Longevity [6]  20 years
Migration [1]  Intercontinental
Nocturnal [1]  Yes
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams, Coastal, Brackish Water
Wing Span [9]  15 inches (.37 m)
Adult Weight [2]  300 grams
Birth Weight [4]  26.9 grams
Female Weight [7]  254 grams
Male Weight [7]  349 grams
Weight Dimorphism [7]  37.4 %
Breeding Habitat [3]  Beaches and estuaries, Coastal saltmarshes
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread Coastal
Wintering Habitat [3]  Beaches and estuaries
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [5]  70 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  30 %
Forages - Water Surface [5]  100 %
Female Maturity [6]  2 years
Male Maturity [6]  2 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Important Bird Areas

Name Location  IBA Criteria   Website   Climate   Land Use 
Bahía de Samborombón y Punta Rasa Argentina A1, A4i, A4iii
Barrier Island and Lagoon System USA A1, A4i    
Reserva de Biosfera Albufera de Mar Chiquita Argentina A1, A4i, A4iii
West Coast Mudflats Trinidad and Tobago A4i, A4iii, B4i

Biodiversity Hotspots

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Corvus ossifragus (Fish Crow)[12]
Falco peregrinus (Peregrine Falcon)[12]
Procyon lotor (Raccoon)[12]
Vulpes vulpes (Red Fox)[12]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Prosthodiplostomum macrocotyle <Unverified Name>[13]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Audio

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Provided by Xeno-canto under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 License Author: Bernabe Lopez-Lanus

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
4Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
6de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
7Quinn, JS 1990. Sexual size dimorphism and parental care patterns in a monomorphic and dimorphic larid. Auk 107:260–274
8Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
9New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
10FISH PREY OF THE BLACK SKIMMER RYNCHOPS NIGER AT MAR CHIQUITA, BUENOS AIRES PROVINCE, ARGENTINA, ROCÍO MARIANO-JELICICH, MARCO FAVERO & MARÍA PATRICIA SILVA, Marine Ornithology 31: 199-202 (2003)
11Szoboszlai AI, Thayer JA, Wood SA, Sydeman WJ, Koehn LE (2015) Forage species in predator diets: synthesis of data from the California Current. Ecological Informatics 29(1): 45-56. Szoboszlai AI, Thayer JA, Wood SA, Sydeman WJ, Koehn LE (2015) Data from: Forage species in predator diets: synthesis of data from the California Current. Dryad Digital Repository.
12Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
13Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Audio software provided by SoundManager 2
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0