EL RAPAZ OLVIDADO -¿POR QUÉ HAY TAN POCOS ESTUDIOS SOBRE LA HISTORIA NATURAL Y ECOLOGÍA BÁSICA DEL TIUQUE (Milvago chimango) EN CHILE

The Chimango Caracara (Milvago chimango) is the raptor species most widely distributed andabundant in Chile. Despite this, there is very little published information on its natural history and ecology inthat country. To investigate this information shortage, I compared the number of studies on Chilean vs. Argentinepopulations of the Chimango Caracara published between January 1900 and August 2015. In my analysis, I onlyselected those publications that addressed definite aspects of natural history and basic ecology of the ChimangoCaracara. I expressed the research productivity as a decadal rate of publication (i.e., number of papers publishedper decade). Until the 1970s, the amount of articles published was similar between Chile and Argentina. Instead,from 1980 to 2015 there was a considerable difference in research productivity. While the rate of publication inArgentina increased from ≈ 1 to ≈ 2.3 articles/year between 1980 and 2015, in Chile it did not exceed 1 article/year. Since 1980, publications on Chimango Caracaras in Argentina also were more diversified than in Chile. Potentialreasons for the lack of studies on the Chimango Caracaras in Chile include historical factors, “blackout”of the natural history, dwindling of the field biology, undervaluation of diet studies, exclusion within integrativeapproaches, and biases of researchers’ interest. To spark again the interest in studying the Chimango Caracara, Isuggest a number of training and research recommendations. These include promotion of the natural history andaspecfieldbiology, reappraisal of diet studies, to link behavioral studies to biological conservation, and prioritizingstudies contributing to deepen our knowledge of the history of life and basic ecology of the species. In southernChile, studies focused to understand the relationship between Chimango Caracaras and native forest are highlyneeded.