Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Co­ereba flave­ola (ba­nanaquit) is com­mon mainly in South Amer­ica. It is most often found within the range from south­ern Mex­ico to north­ern Ar­gentina and largely east­ward through­out South Amer­ica. It oc­cu­pies most of the Caribbean Is­lands and on rare oc­ca­sions is found in Florida (Merola-Zwart­jes 1998).

• Biogeographic Regions
• neotropical
  • native

Habi­tat

The ba­nanaquit cov­ers a range of habi­tats within its ge­o­graph­i­cal area. The birds are most com­monly found at low el­e­va­tions and rarely in the high moun­tain­ous forests. They are pre­sent in open fields, areas of cover, the dense, humid rain forests, and even in cer­tain desert areas. Ob­servers have spot­ted the ba­nanaquit at a va­ri­ety of el­e­va­tions, rang­ing from sea level up to 4000 ft, but is most com­monly seen in the low­lands (usu­ally below 760 ft). Al­though, C. flave­ola is pre­sent in many habi­tats, it is most com­mon in the trop­i­cal re­gion in areas with some cover (Allen 1961; Wun­derle 1984).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland
• forest
• rainforest
• scrub forest

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

The tiny adult ba­nanaquit ranges from about 10.5 to 11.5 cm in length. It has a dark, slen­der, curved beak. Al­though its plumage varies slightly across its ge­o­graphic range, the adult plumage is nearly sex­u­ally monomor­phic. In the male, the feath­ers on the above side are dark gray, while its crown is more black and the un­der­side/rump is bright yel­low. A long, promi­nent, white eye­brow (su­per­cil­ium) sits di­rectly above the eye and many times a white spot (specu­lum) oc­curs on its gen­er­ally black wings. The throat is a lighter shade of gray than the back and in cer­tain races the tail-feath­ers are tipped white. The fe­male ba­nanaquit is very sim­i­lar, ex­cept that her crown is nar­rowly darker, her throat whitish as op­posed to gray, and her rump is more of an olive-yel­low shade. The young ba­nanaquit has feath­ers that are far more dull than its par­ents' and ap­pear more olive-yel­low over its en­tire body. Cer­tain races of the ba­nanaquit tend to be en­tirely black, while oth­ers lack cer­tain col­ors or de­f­i­n­i­tion in their plumage (Allen 1961; Ridgely and Tudor 1989; Fjeldsa and Krabbe 1990).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

Re­pro­duc­tion

Re­pro­duc­tion varies slightly among the sub­species of C. flave­ola. Typ­i­cally, though, the ba­nanaquit will raise sev­eral broods within a year and gen­er­ally the breed­ing sea­son lasts for five months. In cer­tain areas the ba­nanaquit breeds at the end of the dry sea­son (March through early Au­gust). Breed­ing is also often syn­chro­nized with the first rains early in the wet sea­son. Other times, though, breed­ing does not show any re­la­tion­ship to the sea­sonal weather pat­terns.

Ba­nanaquit broods may con­tain from one to three eggs. The eggs them­selves are a white-cream color (some­times pink­ish) with brown/salmon spots that vary in dis­tri­b­u­tion (Allen 1961; Wun­derle 1984).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: wild

  83 months

  Bird Banding Laboratory

Be­hav­ior

The ba­nanaquit, a fast-paced, seem­ingly ner­vous bird, is not colo­nial. It tends to be soli­tary and no­madic. It does not show any ev­i­dence of claim­ing in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries. Males court fe­males, for the most part, with­out act­ing at all de­fen­sively to­wards other males, which char­ac­ter­izes poly­ter­ri­torism.

The bird, in areas where it is most com­mon, may be­come very tame around human set­tle­ments. Na­tives of South Amer­ica find, from time to time, the ba­nanaquit on their kitchen table look­ing for sugar. Its song is char­ac­ter­ized as "in­sect-like," twit­ter­ing, and shrill.

Both the male and fe­male ba­nanaquit build their own globe-shaped nests using leaves, grasses, and plant fibers. The dis­tinc­tive nests have a side en­trance hole and are lined with bits of smaller mat­ter (thread, paper, feath­ers, spi­der web­bing, etc.).

Nest­ing gen­er­ally goes on through­out the year, each sex de­fend­ing a small area sur­round­ing its own roost­ing nest. Prior to breed­ing the male spends his time singing around his own nest and also in the area sur­round­ing a fe­male's nest to at­tract her as a mate. There is ev­i­dence that the breed­ing pairs par­take in some form of courtship rit­ual, which often in­cludes fac­ing each other, bow­ing, turn­ing heads, scrap­ing, and fly­ing in a num­ber of di­rec­tions.

Be­fore a fe­male lays her eggs, the male re­mains very close (within 2 m) to his mate. He is very pro­tec­tive as they feed and gather ma­te­ri­als for a brood­ing nest (dif­fer­ent from her roost­ing nest). Once the eggs have been laid and in­cu­ba­tion has begun the male be­comes far less at­ten­tive. He goes back to singing in the vicin­ity of his own nest and court­ing other fe­males.

At one time the ba­nanaquit was thought to be monog­a­mous, how­ever now mate switch­ing is rec­og­nized as a com­mon prac­tice.

Al­though the males never as­sist in in­cu­bat­ing and most of the feed­ing and other care is done by the fe­male, some males will help in feed­ing and pro­tec­tion. Fe­males, though, play the major role in pro­tect­ing the broods from other male and fe­male ba­nanaquits, as well as other nest preda­tors (in­clud­ing ants, rats, and snakes). (Allen, 1961; Ridgely and Tudor, 1989; Wun­derle, 1984)

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• motile

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Co­ereba flave­ola, often com­pared to hum­ming­birds, takes flower nec­tar as its pri­mary source of food. Al­though it does use its sharp beak to pierce flow­ers from the side to feed, much like some hum­ming­birds, the ba­nanaquit can­not hover like a hum­ming­bird. For this rea­son the bird must al­ways perch while feed­ing and many times hangs up­side down from a branch in­stead of sit­ting up­right. In ad­di­tion to nec­tar, it eats a num­ber of other food items that in­clude fruits, in­sects, and other small arthro­pods. The ba­nanaquit en­joys many kinds of fruit, in­clud­ing ripe ba­nanas. It may also pick small in­sects from the un­der­sides of leaves and eats flies, bee­tles, cater­pil­lars, ants, bees, and spi­ders (Allen 1961; Skutch and Stiles 1989).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Co­ereba flave­ola does not ben­e­fit hu­mans in many ways. Re­cent stud­ies have shown that ba­nanaquits, in ad­di­tion to hum­ming­birds, pol­li­nate at least three species of Brome­lioideae (a sub­fam­ily of bromeliad plants).

Peurto Rico has adopted the ba­nanaquit as its na­tional bird, and many Caribbean and South Amer­i­can coun­tries have fea­tured the bird on their postage stamps (Saz­ima and Saz­ima 1999).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Ba­nanaquits often get to flower nec­tar through the side of the flower. It pierces the flower and re­trieves the nec­tar for its own ben­e­fit. This means that the flower is ei­ther left un­pol­li­nated or will die (Skutch and Stiles 1989).

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Co­ereba flave­ola does not ap­pear to be en­dan­gered in any way across its ge­o­graphic range. It is a rather abun­dant species in the areas in which it oc­curs.

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

Other Com­ments

As ba­nanaquits cover a wide ge­o­graphic range made up largely of is­lands, there are a num­ber of sub­species. In the Caribbean re­gion the species has a "highly vari­able phe­no­type." This long chain of is­lands could only have been pop­u­lated through a process of over-wa­ter dis­per­sal. Each is­land has ended up with its own sub­species of ba­nanaquit. Two main groups are rec­og­nized. The Ba­hamian group in­cludes the Ba­hamas (C.f. ba­hamen­sis), Cay­man Is­lands (C. f. sharpei), coastal is­lands off of Yu­catan (C. f. caboti), and a few oth­ers. The An­til­lean group in­cludes Puerto Rico (C. f. por­tori­cen­sis), St. Croix (C. f. new­toni), Bar­ba­dos (C. f. bar­baden­sis), and a few oth­ers. The sub­species vary mostly in plumage.

In­ter­est­ingly, the highly suc­cess­ful ba­nanaquit in­hab­its ba­si­cally every is­land in the Caribbean ex­cept for Cuba.

Bi­ol­o­gists place C. flave­ola in its own group be­tween the war­bler and tan­ager groups (Allen 1961; Morse 1989; Seutin and Gilles 1994).

Con­trib­u­tors

Erin Hay­den (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor, Phil Myers (ed­i­tor), Mu­seum of Zo­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Allen, R. 1961. Birds of the Caribbean. New York: The Viking Press.

Fjeldsa, J., N. Krabba. 1990. Birds of the High Andes. Svend­borg, Den­mark: Zo­o­log­i­cal Mu­seum, Uni­ver­sity of Copen­hagen, and Apollo Books.

Merola-Zwart­jes, M. July 1998. Meta­bolic rates, tem­per­a­ture reg­u­la­tion, and the en­er­getic im­pli­ca­tions of roost nests in the Ba­hamas (*Co­ereba flave­ola*). Auk, 115(3): 432-433.

Morse, D. 1989. Amer­i­can War­blers. Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press.

Ridgely, R., G. Tudor. 1989. The birds of South Amer­ica: the os­cine passer­ines (Vol 1). Austin, Texas: Uni­ver­sity of Texas Press.

Saz­ima, M., I. Saz­ima. Jan­u­ary 1999. The perch­ing bird of *Co­ereba flave­ola* as a co-pol­li­na­tor of bromeliad flow­ers in south­east­ern Brazil. Cana­dian Jour­nal of Zo­ol­ogy, 77(1): 45-51.

Seutin, , Gilles. Au­gust 1994. His­tor­i­cal Bio­geog­ra­phy of the Ba­nanaquit in the Caribbean Re­gion: A Mi­to­chon­dr­ial DNA As­sess­ment. Evo­lu­tion, 48(4): 1043.

Stiles, F., A. Skutch. 1989. A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. Ith­ica, New York: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press.

Wun­derle, J. 1984. Mate switch­ing and a sea­sonal in­crease in polyg­yny in the ba­nanaquit. Be­hav­iour, 88(1-2): 123-144.