The Wattled Brush-turkey is a large megapode of New Guinea’s mountain forests. Its reddish-brown body bears a red comb and wattle, and it incubates eggs using heat from a mound of leaves and twigs.
The body is dark reddish brown, with a bright red comb and neck wattle during the breeding season. Females are smaller, with duller heads and reduced combs and wattles.
At Crater Mountain in Papua New Guinea, Brown-collared Talegallas renovate mounds built by Wattled Brush-turkeys after the latter have finished breeding, and lay eggs there. The same mound can thus serve two species at different times.
Researchers searched three localities in 1994–1995 with help from local hunters. Eggs and visiting birds were used to identify mound users; the brush-turkey’s white eggs provided an identification clue.
Wattled Brush-turkey mounds occurred on steeper slopes than those of two other local megapodes. Surrounding herbs and trees within the mounds also differed, revealing species-specific site patterns alongside reuse of mounds.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The 2002 paper recommends avoiding forest clearance and tree cutting near mounds, and retaining intact forest on both steep and gentle terrain. Conservation should protect the mounds together with their surrounding forest.