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Kiwi (Apteryx spp.) are flightless ratites from New Zealand whose numbers and distributions have declined following human arrival. Some of the kiwi species are known to hybridise but the extent of hybridization i...
Efficient and safe movement is fundamental for wild birds to thrive in their environments. For arboreal forest animals, especially birds, canopy cover has a large impact on birds’ daily movements and is a cruc...
Flowerpiercers (Diglossa) are traditionally considered as “parasites” of the pollination processes, as they can access the nectar without entering in contact with the reproductive structures of the plants. Nevert...
The European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) is eurytopic in its choice of nest site, which can be either half-open or closed, and situated either on the ground or at a height of several meters. On occasion, robins al...
The composition of intestinal microflora in animals is affected by cross-species transmission. In a nature reserve, the foraging sites of waterbirds are relatively fixed, but frequently close to residential ar...
As an important player during food digestion, gut microbiota has attracted much attention in diet adaptation studies in birds. Microbiota extracted from feces has been widely used as a proxy for gut microbiota...
The Correction to this article has been published in Avian Research 2021 12:26
As the major load-bearing structures, bones exhibit various properties related to mechanical performance to adapt to different locomotor intensities. The habits and ontogenetic changes of locomotion in animals...
Understanding how species diversify is a long-standing question in biology. The allopatric speciation model is a classic hypothesis to explain the speciation process. This model supposes that there is no gene ...
Some studies have indicated that the Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) should be considered as a species complex. Recently it split into four species or clades and seven subclades based on genetic, morphologica...
In bird species where offspring growth and survival rely on parents’ food provisioning, parents can maximise their fitness by increasing the quantity and/or the quality of preys delivered to their offspring. M...
One of the most challenging tasks in wildlife conservation and management is clarifying which and how external and intrinsic factors influence wildlife demography and long-term viability. The wild population o...
The study of seed dispersal, biotic seed dispersal, and even less, the role of birds in it, have been almost neglected in deserts. Virtually absent from the literature on seed dispersal are the ground-jays, ge...
The Maghreb Magpie (Pica mauritanica) is an endemic North African species. Available knowledge on this species is limited to historic descriptive data with no ecological information provided. Populations continue...
Great diversity exists in the parenting pattern of altricial birds, which has long been considered as an adaptive response to specific environmental conditions but not to their life-history style.
In the last decade, enigmatic male-like cuckoo calls have been reported several times in East Asia. These calls exhibited a combination of vocal traits of both Oriental Cuckoo (Cuculus optatus) and Common Cuckoo ...
The Beijing Swift (Apus apus pekinensis) is a typical cavity-nesting bird that often nests inside holes and crevices in old architectures. Direct observation of their breeding behaviour is challenging and their b...
The Rufous-backed Bunting, Emberiza jankowskii, is an endangered species that is primarily distributed in Inner Mongolia, China. The main threats to the continued persistence of this species are habitat loss and ...
For all vertebrates in general, a concerted effort to move beyond single season research is vital to improve our understanding of species ecology. Knowledge of habitat use and selection by Eurasian Bullfinches (P...
The Red-footed Falcon (Falco vespertinus) is a species of high international conservation interest. We analyzed its hunting behavior at the two largest colonies in Italy during the nestling period. Using accurate...
To understand the dietary composition of the highly aerial swift (Apodidae), ecologists conventionally depend on the morphological identification of prey items from food boluses or stomach contents, but these ...
There is increasing interest in evaluating home-range overlap (or, otherwise, segregation) between bird species, and between or within bird populations, to inform spatial planning. So far, studies of home-rang...
Land-use change is one of the main drivers of the global erosion of biodiversity. In that context, it is crucial to understand how landscape characteristics drive the presence of rare endangered species. Never...
Patterns of rarity can be explained by reproductive rates, levels of endemism, and habitat specificity, and knowledge on these parameters is important to understand the levels of vulnerability of each species ...
The intestinal microbiota play remarkable roles in maintaining the health of their hosts. Recent studies focused on gut bacterial diversity in birds and poultry, with little information about the ecological fu...
The Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus) breeds across the high plains and plateau of Central Asia and winters in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and the Indian sub-continent. Of the two r...
Reconciling agriculture and biodiversity conservation is a challenge given the growing demand for agricultural products. In recent decades, Argentina has witnessed agricultural expansion and intensification af...
In this study, we report an unusual homing behavior of the Sichuan Partridge (Arborophila rufipectus) at the Laojunshan National Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China. Hen Sichuan Partridges led the chicks back...
Remnant microhabitats are important for bird habitat selection and plant regeneration in the fragmented habitat. However, empirical information on the consequences of how microhabitat use by birds affects the ...
Habitat loss, fragmentation and decrease of habitat quality caused by urbanization have led to a dramatic decline in biodiversity worldwide. For highly urbanized areas, parks have become “islands” or habitat f...
Flying birds, especially those that hover, need to meet high energetic demands. Birds that meet this demand through nectarivory face the added challenges of maintaining homeostasis in the face of spikes in blo...
The mutually antagonistic processes producing adaptations and counter-adaptations in avian brood parasites and their hosts provide a model system for the study of coevolution; this topic has long been an area ...
The Elegant Pitta (Pitta elegans) complex displays a remarkable diversity of morphological and bioacoustic traits across five taxa currently recognized as subspecies. They differ in plumage characteristics (such ...
The life history of birds dictates their activities and is crucial to population success. However, the life history traits of only one-third of the world’s bird species have been described; the rest are poorly...
The allocation of resources between offspring size and number is a central question of life-history theory. Although several studies have tested the existence of this trade-off, few studies have investigated h...
Small coastal wetlands are vital sites for wintering waterbirds. Identifying important habitats is critical for managing waterbirds effectively. The Vourkari inlet is a small coastal wetland located near the c...
In this paper, we present evidence that biologging is strongly correlated with eye irritation, with sometimes severely impairing effects. A migratory population of the Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita, NBI)...
Extra-pair paternity (EPP) in birds provides benefits in terms of more offspring, and characteristics for maintenance of this behaviour have been the subject of investigation. Microorganisms are known to be tr...
Land use and development alter mudflat and wetland habitat availability, although mudflats and wetlands provide important stopover habitats for shorebirds during the spring and autumn migrations and support co...
Small birds in temperate habitats must either migrate, or adjust aspects of their morphology, physiology and behavior to cope with seasonal change in temperature and photoperiod. It is, however, difficult to a...
Among urban stimuli, anthropogenic noise has been identified to be one of the behavioral drivers of species that rely on acoustic signals for communication. Studies have shown both species-specific and assembl...
Thrush species are rarely parasitized by cuckoos, but many have a strong egg recognition ability. To date, there is a limited understanding of the relationship between host egg rejection and cuckoo parasitism ...
Evaluating relationships between avian populations and their habitat is important for understanding the biology of these species and for management decisions that improve the effectiveness of restoration pract...
Patterns of biological diversity and richness can vary along the elevational gradients among mountain systems making it difficult to conclude the general pattern. The drivers of such pattern are also poorly kn...
Our understanding of any impacts of swans on other waterbirds (including other swans), and potential effects on waterbird community structure, remain limited by a paucity of fundamental behavioural and ecologi...
The dynamics and structure of many bird communities are changing due to the global warming and changes in the land use and management. The Ebro Valley constitutes one of the chief wintering areas for several p...
Research activities have often been thought to potentially influence avian nesting success by increasing nest predation rates. Although recent studies of species building open nests and cavity nests suggest th...
We report for the first time the occurrence of heteroplasmy in Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix) revealed by means of two mitochondrial fragments. The possible serious biological and management implications of this ...
Although urbanization is threatening biodiversity worldwide, the increasing green urban spaces could harbor relatively high biodiversity. Therefore, how to maintain the biodiversity in urban ecosystem is cruci...
Unlike resident birds, migratory birds are generally believed to have evolved to enhance flight efficiency; however, direct evidence is still scarce due to the difficulty of measuring the flight speed and mech...
The Common Pochard (Aythya ferina) (hereafter Pochard), a widespread and common freshwater diving duck in the Palearctic, was reclassified in 2015 from Least Concern to Vulnerable IUCN status based on rapid decli...
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