Priorities for Future Research

Mexican Sheartail is an attractive species, but its natural history remains very poorly known. Although geographic variation in morphology between the disjunct Veracruz and Yucatan populations has not been demonstrated, there are suggestions of interesting differences in habitat preferences, displays, and sex ratio (or in the rate of male plumage maturation) between these two regions; these potential differences merit considerable further investigation. Relatively little is known about the foraging behavior of the sheartail, and even less has been reported about its reproductive biology. There also is no information on such topics as population density, life span and survivorship, dispersal, or population regulation.