The white-collared manakin (''Manacus candei'') is a

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the

manakin The manakins are a family, Pipridae, of small suboscine passerine birds. The group contains 55 species distributed through the American tropics. The name is from Middle Dutch "little man" (also the source of the different bird name '' mannikin' ...

family. It is a resident breeder in the tropical

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

from southeastern

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

and the extreme west of

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

. It typically inhabits thickets at the edges of moist forest, tall secondary growth and old cacao plantations. It is a small, plump bird about long. Males have a black crown, mid-back band, wings and tail, an olive-green rump and yellow belly. Females and juveniles are olive-green with yellow bellies and resemble female orange-collared manakins. At breeding time, males are involved in

lekking A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. It can also refer to a space us ...

behaviour on the forest floor during which they puff out their neck feathers. This is a fairly common species with a wide range, and the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

has rated its conservation status as being of "

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

Distribution and habitat

The bird is named after Admiral

Antoine Marie Ferdinand de Maussion de Candé Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin. The name is most common in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, Frenc ...

, an explorer of South America. It occurs in the lowlands and foothills of the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

slope up to 700 m, being replaced on the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

slopes of Costa Rica and Panama by the closely related orange-collared (''M. aurantiacus'') and golden-collared (''M. vitellinus'') manakins. It hybridizes extensively with the golden-collared manakin in a limited area in

Bocas del Toro Province Bocas del Toro (; meaning "Mouths of the Bull") is a Provinces of Panama, province of Panama. Its area is 4,643.9 square kilometers, comprising the mainland and nine main islands. The province consists of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, Bahía Al ...

. The hybrids, which show a lemon yellow collar in males, were at one time considered a distinct species, the almirante manakin (''Manacus''×''cerritus'') (Brumfield ''et al.'', 2001; McDonald ''et al.'', 2001). Manacus candei1

This is a bird of thickets at the edges of moist forest, tall second growth and old

cacao plantation ''Theobroma cacao'' (cacao tree or cocoa tree) is a small ( tall) evergreen tree in the Malvaceae family. Its seedscocoa beansare used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and chocolate. Although the tree is native to the tropi ...

Description

The white-collared manakin is, like its relatives, a compact short-tailed bird with a heavy hooked bill, orange legs and brightly coloured male plumage. It is typically 11 cm long and weighs 18.5 g. The adult male has a black crown, wings and tail, and a black band across the midback. The rest of the head, neck, breast and upper back are white, the rump is olive-green, and the belly is bright yellow. The male wings are heavily modified, with the five outer primaries very narrow for their outer half, and the inner primaries thickened and bowed. This feature is shared only by the male orange-collared and golden-collared manakins. The male's call is a rolled ', and the wings are used to make a loud snap like a breaking twig, as with other manakins, and various rustling and whiffling noises produced by the modified wings. The female and young males are olive-green with a yellow belly. They are very similar to female orange-collared manakin, but there is no range overlap.

Ecology

Like other manakins, this species has a fascinating breeding display at a communal lek. Each male clears a patch of forest floor up to 120 cm across to bare earth, and leaps to and fro between thin upright bare sticks, giving a loud wing snap. When a female is present males jump together, crossing each other above the bare display court. The throat feathers are also erected to form a beard. The female lays two brown-speckled white eggs in a shallow cup nest 1–3 m high in a horizontal tree fork. Nest-building, incubation for 18–21 days, and care of the young are undertaken by the female alone, since manakins do not form stable pairs. The white-collared manakin feeds low in the trees on

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propaga ...

and some

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

s, both plucked from the foliage in flight.

Status

This bird has a very wide range, is fairly common and is presumed to have a large total population. The population trend is thought to be stable and the

has rated the bird's conservation status as being of "

References

*Brumfield, Robb T.; Jernigan, Robert W.; McDonald, David B.; Braun, Michael J. (2001): Evolutionary implications of divergent clines in an avian (''Manacus'': Aves) hybrid zone. ''

Evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

'' 55(10): 2070–2087
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* McDonald, David B.; Clay, Robert P.; Brumfield, Robb T. & Braun, Michael J. (2001): Sexual selection on plumage and behavior in an avian hybrid zone: experimental tests of male-male interactions. ''

'' 55(7): 1443–1451
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*Stiles, F. Gary & Skutch, Alexander Frank (1989): ''A guide to the birds of Costa Rica''. Comistock, Ithaca. {{Taxonbar, from=Q667969 white-collared manakin Birds of Mexico Birds of Belize Birds of Guatemala Birds of Honduras Birds of Nicaragua Birds of Costa Rica white-collared manakin