Priorities for Future Research

The Turquoise Tanager is widely distributed and is fairly common across its range. Nonetheless, most aspects of its natural history are very poorly known. There is no information on such topics as age at first breeding, life span and survivorship, dispersal, population regulation, molts, territoriality, sexual behavior, and responses to predators. There also is very little information regarding the reproductive biology of the Turquoise Tanager. Furthermore, most of what little is known about this species refers to the northern populations; the natural history of the geographically restricted eastern subspecies brasiliensis is much less studied. For that matter, the relationship between  brasiliensis and the other subspecies of Turquoise Tanager should be reassessed, to ascertain whether or not brasiliensis merits recognition as a separate species.