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Agricultural expansion and intensification drive changes in bird assemblages and contribute to the homogenization of communities. By working across the semi‐arid biome of the Caatinga in northeastern Brazil, this study is the first to compare the bird communities found in intensively managed fruit farms with those in remnant Caatinga forest patches. We show that fruit farm patches host 56% lower bird...
Parental care in birds encompasses many behaviours, from selecting nest‐sites and supplying eggs with nutrients to incubation and offspring provisioning. Unlike the early stages, where offspring are passive receivers of care, chicks actively solicit care after hatching. This may lead to either parent–offspring conflict or coadaptation, or both, if there is genetic variance in both parental provisioning...
Among avian species, particularly those with altricial young, life‐history strategies are characterized by a ‘slow’ pace‐of‐life at lower latitudes, where relatively low annual investments in reproduction are traded‐off for increased survival. Evidence for this pattern in precocial species, however, is equivocal, and questions about ecological drivers of latitudinal variation in reproduction remain...
The Nicobar Bulbul Ixos nicobariensis is an endemic species found across the central Nicobar Islands whose systematic position has been debated for many decades. Its current placement in the genus Ixos is tentative and is based on morphological similarities and geographical affinities to other members of the genus. We used mitochondrial and nuclear markers to examine its phylogenetic relationship...
Beginning in the mid‐1990s, populations of three species of Gyps vultures declined by more than 97% in South Asia in little more than a decade, caused by unintentional poisoning by the non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drug (NSAID) diclofenac. This led to a ban on the veterinary use of the drug, and establishment of conservation breeding programmes, throughout the region. Once much of Nepal had been...
In many bird species, nestling begging signals play a key role in the interaction between parents and their offspring during development. The information conveyed by begging calls can be disrupted by anthropogenic noise, which is one of the major threats to biodiversity in increasingly urbanized landscapes. Here, we describe the developmental change in acoustic structure of begging calls in nestling...
Territorial defence depends on highly interrelated factors such as food abundance and conspecific density. We used Dupont's Lark Chersophilus duponti as a model species to evaluate the response of a territorial bird to a foreign male playback, examining how conspecific density, habitat quality and male body condition impact responses. The study was conducted in central Spain with variable male density...
The Negros Fruit Dove Ptilinopus arcanus is an enigmatic bird known only from a single specimen collected on Negros Island, Philippines, in 1953. We extracted and sequenced ultra‐conserved elements from historical toe‐pad samples of the type specimen of P. arcanus and 27 other species of ptilinopine doves to investigate the species status and phylogenetic relationships of this taxon. We establish...
A robust understanding of the mechanisms driving demographic change in wild animal populations is fundamental to the delivery of effective conservation interventions. Demographic change can be driven by variation in adult survival, recruitment of juveniles into the breeding population or breeding productivity – the number of fledglings produced per breeding pair. Across Europe, low breeding productivity...
Nomadic species can rely on unpredictable resources making them challenging to understand and, consequently, to conserve. Here, we present knowledge advancement for a nomadic predator, the Short‐eared Owl Asio flammeus, by tracking individuals from a wide latitudinal range inclusive of most breeding populations in western Europe (Iceland, Scotland and Spain). Tracked owls showed pronounced plasticity...
A wide variety of attachment techniques have been used to track birds with electronic tags, with glue, tape, leg rings, neck collars and harnesses being the most common methods. In general, the choice of attachment method should strive to minimize tagging effects, but ensure that sufficient data are collected to address the research question at hand. The aim of our study was to develop and evaluate...
The Hoopoe Starling Fregilupus varius is an extinct species of the Sturnidae that was endemic to Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The species rapidly disappeared in the middle of the 19th century, primarily because of overexploitation by humans. We generated an approximately 11× coverage genome to reconstruct the demographic history of the Hoopoe Starling and compared these results with the demographic...
Establishing methods that allow for more focused management of wildlife under predator pressure may increase the efficiency of managing problematic predators. Non‐invasive dietary analysis and identification of conservation‐sensitive prey in the diet of ‘culprit’ predator individuals could help to facilitate this and is worthy of exploration. Recently on Phillip Island, Australia, Little Ravens Corvus mellori...
Avian nesting associations are a prominent feature of breeding bird communities. Protective associations between a predator and prey species represent a scenario where typically antagonistic interacting species may confer benefits on each species. The outcomes of these interactions are likely to be context‐dependent and influenced by biotic and abiotic conditions. African Pygmy Falcons Polihierax semitorquatus...
When waders gather in mixed‐species flocks to feed on benthic prey, differences in morphological traits, foraging strategies and prey selection may allow different species to optimize their energy intake while reducing competition. As the effect of the fine‐scale spatial distribution of resources on energy intake is unknown, we simulated the foraging performance of two types of waders with contrasting...
Biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health are becoming increasingly integrated in the ‘One Health’ concept, including recognition of the impacts of biodiversity loss on human health. Birds have considerable potential to benefit human health through their contributions to ecosystem functioning, recreation, and provision of pest control and pollination services, commonly referred to as ecosystem...
Mountain birds face numerous challenges caused by altitude‐dependent environmental seasonality. Although elevation gradients may affect bird morphology, migration strategy and/or phenology of seasonal events (breeding and moulting), the life histories of highland compared with lowland birds have been little explored. In this study we compared the growth rate and mass of the tail feathers of six forest...
Migratory birds must fit three costly life‐history events within the annual cycle, reproduction, moult and migration, to minimize their overlap and maximize survival and breeding success. However, some seabirds, such as Cory's Shearwater Calonectris borealis, overlap body moult and breeding, with flight feather renewal occurring in late chick‐rearing. In contrast, the moult patterns of non‐breeding...
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