Home > Species > Birds > Juan Fernandez Firecrown

Juan Fernandez Firecrown

Sephanoides fernandensis

Overview
Conservation Attention
Threats

About

The Juan Fernández Firecrown is only found on one island, 700km off the coast of Chile.

The males of this species have a rich chestnut colour, with beautiful, flashing iridescent feathers on his crown and forehead. Females also model the iridescent head plumage, but with blue and green body, contrasting with a white breast. This crown is flashed at intruders during territorial disputes. Interestingly, unlike most other birds which have a 1:1 sex ratio, the sex ratio in this species is heavily skewed. There are three males to every female, and this could be as a result of intense intra and interspecies competition over access to flowers for food. This species is part of the Trochilidae hummingbird family, which diverged from all other species 26 million years ago. The major threats to this species are clearance and degradation of vegetation by humans and also the impact of herbivorous mammals, which limits the availability, quantity and quality of food sources. Predation from introduced animals has also been a problem for this species. There are conservation actions underway as the Juan Fernández islands were designated as a national park and became protected areas. They are now a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and also nominated for World Heritage listing. There are also two island residents who act as project coordinators to control invasive plants and herbivores. The population of this species is now monitored.

Order: Caprimulgiformes
Family: Trochilidae
Population: 740
Trend: decreasing
Size: 13cm

EDGE Score

EDGE Score: 4.91 (?)

ED Score: 7.48 (?)

GE / IUCN Red List (?)

Distribution

The species is found on the Juan Fernández islands, Chile.

Habitat and Ecology

This species lives in native forests, as its breeding is entirely dependent on native plant communities. However, it uses non-native plants for feeding during the non-breeding season. It is mainly nectarivorous (eats nectar) but small insects are taken from leaves or in flight.

Find out more

© Kevin Mack
Please contact the photographer directly if you would like to use this picture.

View Gallery (12) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Peter Hodum
peter@oikonos.org
www.oikonos.org
Please contact the photographer directly if you would like to use this picture.

Conservation Actions

For each key category of conservation action, we calculated a conservation attention score based on expert information. In this graph, a higher score means the action is being carried out more intensively over more of the species range. The colour shows how important each action is considered to be for the conservation of this species.

Engaging stakeholders	67
Addressing threats	67
Status of knowledge	78
Management plan	33
Capacity building	48
Behaviour change	7
Awareness raising	59
Funding	48
Legislation	74
	0 20 40 60 80 100
	Score: 100 means the activity occurs at high level across more than 75% of the species range
	Priority: High Medium Low Very Low

Overall Conservation Attention

We combined all of the expert information on conservation actions to calculate an overall conservation attention score for this species. Please help us to reach our goal of establishing dedicated conservation attention at “High” levels for all EDGE species.

Very Low Low Medium High

46%

More information

Recent studies have grouped all possible conservation activities for any species into nine key categories (Washington et. al 2015). For each action, we asked experts for each species to assess the extent to which that action is being carried out and how much of the species’ range that action occurs in. For each action we used these two pieces of information to calculate the conservation attention score per action. A score of 100 means that the action is being carried out to a high level across at least 75% of the species range. We then combined the scores for all actions into an overall conservation attention score for the species. The experts also judged how important each category was to the conservation of that particular species.

This wordcloud illustrates the threats facing this species. The size of each word indicates the extent of a species range that is affected by that threat (larger size means a greater area is affected). The colour of the word indicates how much that threat impacts the species (darker shades of red mean the threat is more severe).