Re: Alvarezsaurs, their snout,myrmecophages and woodpeckers

["Brian Lauret" <zthemanvirus@hotmail.com>]

> Well, I'm sorry to say this, but you are wrong.  Ant-eating birds coexist 
> with ant-eating mammals in many parts of the world; for example, flickers 
> coexist with ant eaters in South America, many species of woodpecker 
> coexist with pangolins in Southeast Asia, and the Australian treecreepers, 
> some of which are ant specialists, coexist with the numbat in Australia.
Well I guess you get me wrong.I know these coexist in these regions but what 
I ment we only have small myrmecophagous birds in these regions.To me this 
seems like niche partitioning. Large myrmecophages are always mammals in 
these regions while the only really small myrmecophagous mammal is the 
neortropical dwarf anteater. By contrast ALL tropical myrmecophagous birds 
are small,while they grow,or used to grow into large respectable sizes in 
areas devoid of these large myrmecophagous mammals,were birds with this diet 
occupy the anteating niches for both small and large species.