Wayne Arendt
P. O. Box 534
Luquillo, PR 00773
(787) 504-5416
(787) 889-7477 (Fax)
Wayne is an ornithologist who has been with the USFS-IITF for more than 30 years consulting, conducting wildlife research and training, and writing technical publications and sound conservation management documents used throughout the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. His research experience and interests are broad. His main focus, however, is on resident and migratory bird communities, with an emphasis on population dynamics (species richness, composition, demography, abundance and distribution) and avian life-history strategies (life-time and annual reproductive success, survival, and longevity). His community studies are carried out on a landscape level, among diverse habitats, and along disturbance and elevational gradients. Results from his personal and cooperative research have shed light on the proximate and long-term responses of birds from divergent taxonomical groups to biological threats (ectoparasites, trans-shell microbial pathogens, and several vertebrates), as well as natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Recently, Wayne and his international colleagues and students have expanded their research to include the monitoring of bioindicator species from several vertebrate and invertebrate taxa to show the empirical value of biodiversity, which is the basis for all ecosystem services and the foundation for sustainable development; his cooperative research has already begun to add to our knowledge of precisely how, when and where biodiversity plays its fundamental role in maintaining and enhancing the well-being of the world’s more than 6.7 billion people. Several private wildlife reserve owners, regional biologists, rural youth and local communities are all ‘beneficiaries’ of Wayne’s cooperative biodiversity and biomonitoring studies, and already have begun to enhance their livelihoods directly or indirectly from revenues generated from eco- and avetourism, both of which are on the rise worldwide and, more recently, in Nicaragua and northern Mesoamerica.
