Turquoise-browed Motmot

The turquoise-browed motmot is a colourful, medium-sized bird of the motmot family, Momotidae. It is the only species in its genus Eumomota. It inhabits Central America from south-east Mexico, to Costa Rica, where it is common and not considered threatened. It lives in fairly open habitats such as forest edge, gallery forest and scrubland. It has a preference for higher tree diversity and richness, alongside a low open canopy and dense understory. It also appears to prefer dry forest. This is in contrast to the other motmot known to inhabit the Yucatán, Lesson’s motmot, which prefers moist forest. As a result, their respective distributions allow ecologists to map the process of aridification induced by anthropogenic climate change. Some literature thus considers the turquoise-browed motmot to be a bioindicator.