--the downy woodpecker hairy woodpecker red-bellied woodpecker--as well as the white-breasted nuthatch a common bark-gleaning species that is also a potential predator of EAB.
and white-breasted nuthatches increased in abundance scientists found. Populations of downy and hairy woodpeckers initially declined significantly
and Distributions U s. Forest Service researchers Andrew Liebhold Laura Blackburn Susan Frankel and partners used spatial data to demonstrate that the distribution of invasive forest pests is focused highly with a particularly large
However rising temperatures threaten wild birds including the Missouri-native Acadian flycatcher by making snakes more active according to University of Missouri biologist John Faaborg.
Over the past twenty years fewer young Acadian flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) survived during hotter years according to research by Faaborg
Survival of young indigo buntings (Passerina cyanea) also decreased during warmer years. Faaborg suggested that a likely reason for decreased baby bird survival in hot years was an increase in snake activity.
and how it affects prairie chickens and grassland songbirds. Patch-burn grazing involves dividing a pasture into three parts and burning a third of the pasture each year.
Rye collaborated on the research with Dong-Hua Chen and Wah Chiu at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Damian Madan and Zohn Lin at Princeton university Jeremy Weaver at Texas A&m
Rye collaborated on the research with Dong-Hua Chen and Wah Chiu at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Damian Madan and Zohn Lin at Princeton university Jeremy Weaver at Texas A&m
and The british Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has found that feeding wild blue tits in winter resulted in less successful breeding during the following spring.
The research published in Scientific Reports revealed that woodland blue tits that were provided with fat balls as a supplementary food during the winter months went on to produce chicks that were smaller of lower body weight and
During winter populations of blue tits were left unfed given plain fat balls or given fat balls enriched with Vitamin e--a vitamin commonly present in bird food such as nuts and seeds.
Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system.
The Clark's nutcracker a mountain bird can store up to 100000 seeds in underground caches each year. Squirrels also store thousands of seeds underground.
#Songbirds may give insight to nature vs. nurtureon June 3rd Jove will publish a research technique that allows neural imaging of auditory stimuli in songbirds via MRI.
or the zebra finch used in the Jove article are unique as they provide a landscape for scientists to study song acquisition storage and regurgitation.
which makes any findings derived from songbirds highly applicable to working with the human brain. Until recently fmri in small animals was focused mainly on rats
Thus far songbird brains have been studied using electrophysiological and histological techniques. However these approaches do not provide a global view of the brain
Using the songbird model and MRI as an in vivo tool allows us to answer many questions related to learning language and neuroendocrinological plasticity.
or between genetically modified songbirds and naturally occurring ones. Results of these trials will allow researchers to gain insight into genetic and social components of behavior bringing insight to the Nature vs.
whose beaks are more than 12 millimeters wide such as toucans and large cotingas. In undisturbed patches of forest on the other hand large-gaped birds still make their homes
Herbert Hoi and colleagues of the University of Veterinary medicine Vienna together with scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava carried out experiments with reed warblers to see how a situation of potential infidelity affects later paternal investment in the chicks
Reed warblers are socially monogamous defend their territory and both parents care for the offspring. Scientists of the Konrad-Lorenz-Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time tried to experimentally test the behaviour of reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) after a potential act of cheating by the female.
How does the male treat a competitor and how does an affair affect care for the brood?
To answer these questions they simulated an increased risk of adulterous behaviour in female reed warblers by briefly introducing a caged extra male to 31 reed warbler pairs during the female's fertile period.
In addition they played back recorded songs of randomly selected warbler males from the area. The scientists then observed nest building activity and feeding of offspring and determined chick paternity through DNA analyses.
The Salinas River and its tributaries are an important rest stop on the Pacific Flyway a major migration route for neotropical songbirds and home to raptors and shorebirds.
and nestlings such as robins when nests are built in buckthorn and honeysuckle compared to nests built in native shrubs or trees.
Climate change disrupts songbirds timing without impacting population size (yet) Songbird populations can handle far more disrupting climate change than expected.
but songbirds like Parus major or the great tit lag behind. Yet without an accompanying decline in population numbers it seems as the international research team shows for the great tit population in the Dutch National park the Hoge Veluwe.
It's a real paradox explain Dr Tom Reed and Prof Marcel Visser of The netherlands Institute of Ecology.
Due to the changing climate of the past decades the egg laying dates of Parus major have become increasingly mismatched with the timing of the main food source for its chicks:
caterpillars. The seasonal timing of the food peak has advanced over twice as fast as that of the birds
and colleagues from Norway the USA and France have calculated now using almost 40 years of data from this songbird.
One recent study has suggested that house sparrows and finches add high-nicotine cigarette butts to their nests to reduce mite infestations.
But less attention has been given to the many cases in which animals medicate their offspring or other kin according to Hunter and his colleagues.
Comparing with chicken and zebra finch researchers found the transposable element composition of falcons was most similar to that of zebra finch.
and zebra finch and comprise less than 1%of both falcon genomes. They also found that a gene expansion in the olfactory receptor Î-c clade in chicken
and zebra finch is not present in falcons possibly reflecting their reliance on vision for locating prey.
Observing genome-wide rapid evolution for both falcons chicken zebra finch and turkey researchers found that the nervous system olfaction
study findsa female great tits'(Parus major) appearance is shown to signal healthy attributes in offspring in a paper in Biomed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology.
which aren't learned like songbird songs or human speech the researchers say. We still do not know why a dog says'bow-wow
and elsewhere in Europe Increasing deer populations are a serious threat to biodiversity--particularly impacting on woodland birds such as migrant warblers and the nightingale.
Robertson's astonishing legacya professor of biology and Greek at Blackburn College in Carlinville Illinois Charles Robertson collected flower-visiting insects near Carlinville between 1887 and 1916.
The study also determined that sensitive bird species such as the hermit thrush and scarlet tanager prefer unbroken forests with no houses.
Others like the blue jay and black-capped chickadee seem to like having and often thrive with human neighbors.
As part of the study scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park.
The study found that species sensitive to human impacts include the black-throated blue warbler black-throated green warbler hairy woodpecker hermit thrush ovenbird scarlet tanager and the winter wren.
The presence of some species like the scarlet tanager are a good indicator of undisturbed forest health.
His conclusion is based on earlier work by linguists including Noam Chomsky Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser.
The Bengalese finch as the authors note can loop back to parts of previous melodies allowing for greater variation and communication of more things;
a nightingale may be able to recite from 100 to 200 different melodies. By contrast other types of animals have barebones modes of expression without the same melodic capacity.
while maintaining trust said Dr Penny Sparrow from the John Innes Centre. This will be of high importance especially in Europe where the issues surrounding the cultivation of GM agricultural crops remains a contentious concern.
and for investors said Sparrow. Regulations need to be harmonised across the world in order to keep advances and competition on a level playing field.
Dr Sparrow was involved in a collaboration with EU partners to road test the challenges faced by potential investors.
A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona estimated that 150 Clark's nutcrackers cached roughly 5 million pinyon pine nuts in a single season benefiting not only the birds themselves but also the pines
and birds also have significantly more mosquitoes--as well as American robins and house sparrows the two bird species implicated the most in the disease's transmission.
These same habitats are also resulting in much higher rates of infection within mosquitoes themselves said Crowder.
We find that all three of these things--abundances of house sparrows and American robins abundance of mosquitoes and the actual prevalence of West Nile in mosquitoes--are increasing in landscapes with a higher proportion of land in orchard habitats.
These habitats says Crowder include both orchards and vineyards. It's still unclear why the habitats would create such a perfect storm for the virus. The researchers speculate that mosquitoes are drawn to orchards for plant nectar during flowering
while robins and house sparrows use them for nesting and feeding. Together the insects and birds become focal points for the disease.
That is different from most species such as deer warblers and swallowtail butterflies whose populations tend to be regular around some average abundance based on food weather and other external factors says Matt Ayres a professor in the Department of Biological sciences at Dartmouth and senior author on the paper.
#New tree of life traces evolution of a mysterious cotinga birdsthey are some of the brightest loudest oddest-looking least-understood birds on the planet.
But thanks to a comprehensive new evolutionary tree of life generated for the tropical cotinga family of South america the door is now open to new discoveries about the more than 60 species in this amazingly diverse group of birds.
Our study provides comprehensive insight into how nearly all the cotinga species are related to each other going all the way back to their common ancestor says lead author Jake Berv a Ph d. student in the Fuller Evolutionary Biology lab at the Cornell Lab
Rick Prum a leading expert on cotingas. Understanding how one species is related to another within this group allows scientists to trace the evolution of specific traits and behaviors.
This appears to be true for many species--but not the cotingas. When Berv and Prum examined patterns of evolution for these two traits across their new tree of life it turned out that they didn't perfectly match up.
The statistics they calculated also supported the conclusion that these traits may be coupled evolutionarily de in the cotingas.
Sexual selection appears to have played a role in the evolution of non-plumage gender differences in some cotinga species. In one case the Screaming Piha the males
This is especially true for grassland birds as populations of species like the eastern meadowlark dickcissel and the bobolink have declined in recent decades.
The study began when UW-Madison's Carol Williams coordinator of the Wisconsin Grasslands Bioenergy Network and the DNR's David Sample approached Turner
Creighton Litton and Susan Crow (University of Hawai`i at Manoa) and Dr. Greg Asner (Carnegie Institution for Science) shows that soil carbon storage was constant across a highly constrained 5 degrees
For example an area inhabited by two species of blackbirds that diverged only a couple of million years ago would have relatively low phylogenetic diversity.
The tinamou--a speckled football-shaped flightless bird--diverged from blackbirds about 100 million years ago
and if it moved into the blackbird's habitat the phylogenetic diversity of that area would increase significantly.
While sparrows are adept at finding shelter in farmlands and are happy to eat a variety of seeds found in those areas the tinamou
We find some evidence that birds that evolved in those types of habitats such as blackbirds
and sparrows are doing better in those habitats today. Preserving biodiversity and phylogenetic history is critical for both healthy ecosystems
Having just sparrows in an ecosystem is like investing only in technology stocks: If the bubble bursts you lose Frishkoff said.
These are also significant threats in the nation's grasslands where the report notes a decline in breeding birds like the eastern meadowlark and the bobolink of nearly 40 percent since 1968.
The creation and preservation of large swaths of forests through public-private partnerships in the Appalachian mountains and the Northwest has helped declining forest-dependent species such as the golden-winged warbler and the oak titmouse.
A positive precedent however lies with the cerulean warbler a species that breeds in forests of the eastern U s. and winters in the tropics.
The report identifies 33 species like the northern bobwhite quail grasshopper sparrow and bank swallow that do not meet the Watch List criteria
but are declining rapidly in many areas. These birds have lost more than half their global population
Sows don't usually start their oestrous cycles again during lactation only coming on heat after their piglets have been weaned says Ms Alice Weaver Phd candidate with the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences.
Ms Weaver's study investigated whether oestrus could be stimulated while sows were still feeding their piglets so the sows could be mated before their piglets were weaned.
or not says Ms Weaver. We've shown that piglet weaning age should be able to be increased with sows still producing the average 2. 4 litters a year.
The study which appears Aug 21 in PLOS Pathogens found strong genetic evidence that three tree species--Canary Island pine Pohutukawa
#Ravens rule Idahos artificial roostsa new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) U s. Geological Survey (USGS) and Idaho State university (ISU) explored how habitat alterations
Researchers compared nesting habitat selection between Common Ravens and three raptor species commonly found in sagebrush ecosystems:
and other artificial substrates (e g. cell towers billboards buildings) are preferred overwhelmingly by ravens as nesting sites
and 87.1 percent more likely to be that of a raven than that of a Swainson's Hawk Red-tailed hawk and Ferruginous Hawk respectively.
Raven populations have increased precipitously in the past four decades in sagebrush ecosystems largely as a result of fragmentation and development of anthropogenic structures.
in addition to habitat fragmentation the addition of human-made structures benefit ravens whereas some species of raptors like the Ferruginous Hawk have been impacted
Why the difference in nest selection between ravens and large hawks? The answer may be linked to the availability of preferred prey.
Ravens are opportunistic foragers eating just about anything including carrion. In addition they tend to be highly intelligent birds that adapt quickly to changing environments
Ravens were classified as an uncommon breeder within this area as recently as 1986. Common Ravens are now the most pervasive predatory species nesting in this area accounting for 46 percent of nests among these four avian predator species. Transmission towers are the tallest objects at the study area.
Nesting on or near them may afford ravens myriad advantages including a wider range of vision greater attack speed
and greater security from predators range fires and heat stress. While this is good news for ravens it could be bad news for sensitive prey species including the Greater Sage-grouse.
Howe speculates on the study's other implications and directions for future research: Since ravens are important predators of young birds
and eggs and hawks are predominantly predators of adults these landscape changes could shift ecosystem dynamics.
and young and correspondingly lower for adult sage-grouse and other prey species. This adds new insights for ecosystem managers who seek to understand the complex relationships between ravens hawks sage-grouse populations and habitat changes.
Increases In common Raven distribution and abundance in the American west mirror declines in distribution and abundance of Greater Sage-grouse where energy transmission corridors and other land use changes have altered sagebrush steppe
influence differential habitat use of nesting Buteos and ravens within sagebrush ecosystem: Implications for transmission line development will appear in the August 2014 print issue of the journal The Condor.
â#¢73 percent of ravens nests were located on artificial nesting substrates of which 53 percent were located on transmission line towers. â#¢Both ravens
and Red-tailed hawks selected nest sites in close proximity to habitat edges while Swainson's and Ferruginous Hawks selected nest sites far from habitat edges.
In an ongoing research project behavioral biologists at Vetmeduni Vienna are investigating how blue tits in the Viennese Forests react to light pollution.
The team is interested particularly in the reproductive behavior of blue tits in the Viennese Forests. Blue tits seem to be good model species for this study
because we know a lot about their mating and reproductive behaviour. Besides they frequently breed in cities
Besides male blue tits are morning singers. Particularly fit males start to sing pre-dawn songs.
We also know that female blue tits tend to be unfaithful to their partners but do so covertly.
The research project Does Light Pollution affect the Breeding Performance of wild Blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in the Viennese Forest?
Ravens and possibly arctic foxes scavenged exposed portions of her carcass including parts of the trunk and skull and the fat hump that likely covered the back of her neck.
#Birdlike fossil challenges notion that birds evolved from ground-dwelling dinosaursthe re-examination of a sparrow-sized fossil from China challenges the commonly held belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs
in squirrels and passerines it was lower and in partridges it was low. Authors highlight that carbon
Last year a pair of researchers linked the drop in the populations of grassland bird species such as the upland sandpiper and the Henslow's sparrow to insecticide use rather than to a rapid decline of grasslands a more commonly accepted theory.
Wildlife and Wild Lands on the Flathead National Forest Montana WCS Senior Scientist Dr. John Weaver notes that these protections may not be enough in the face of looming challenges such as climate change.
Weaver found that the Flathead is a stronghold for these fish and wildlife species that have been vanquished in much of their range further south.
or high conservation value for at least one of the five focal species. In his recommendations Weaver employs a smart strategy for resiliency that protects
In total Weaver recommends 404208 acres of roadless area on the Flathead Forest for Congressional designation as National Wilderness
and decisions about future management on the Flathead National Forest said Weaver. These spectacular landscapes provide some of the best remaining strongholds for vulnerable fish and wildlife and headwater sources of clean water.
Three loggerhead shrike chicks hatched in Mid-may at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute In front Royal Va. Loggerhead shrikes also called butcher birds are songbirds that hunt small animals by impaling them on thorns or barbed wire.
Loggerhead shrikes were once common but they have declined rapidly for several decades and there may be as few as 100 wild loggerhead shrikes left In virginia.
They are listed as threatened or endangered in 20 states and have disappeared from New england. The reason for their decline is understood not
The commonwealth's Northern Tier--one of the largest blocks of Eastern deciduous forest in the entire Appalachian region--is an important breeding area for neotropical migrant songbirds.
and pipelines create networks of disturbance that fragment forests changing songbird communities Brittingham explained. The cumulative effect of many small-scale disturbances within the forest is resulting in the homogenization of bird communities with species that inhabit the interior forest such as black-throated blue warblers ovenbirds
and Blackburnian warblers being pushed out and species that prefer living in edge habitat and near people and development such as robins blue jays and mourning doves moving in she said.
Biotic homogenization is a subtle process by which generalists replace specialists with common and widespread species tending to become more abundant and habitat specialists declining.
Our results revealed changes in avian guilds resulting from oil and gas development and suggest that a loss of community uniqueness is a consequence.
or absence of different songbird species in a range of landscapes including undisturbed forest low-density oil and gas development and high-density development.
They catalogued the abundance and diversity of songbirds in the study areas which spanned two types of forest--northern hardwood and oak.
Songbird species that prefer early successional habitat increased in abundance on the edge of gas development.
and Why it Matters released this week by the Boreal Songbird Initiative Ducks Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited Canada.
For example Canada warblers and evening grosbeaks have experienced both recently close to 80 percent declines in numbers says the report.
Save threatened species by giving them treated cotton for nestswhen University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide wild finches in the Galapagos islands used the cotton to help build their nests killing parasitic
From the perspective of the birds these things are from Mars. Knutie says the flies now infest all land birds there including most of the 14 species of Darwin's finches two
fewer than 100 mangrove finches remain on Isabela Island and only about 1620 medium tree finches exist all on Floreana Island.
Nest flies have been implicated in population declines of Darwin's finches including the two endangered species. Clayton says the pesticide--permethrin--is safe for the birds:
It might kill a few other insects in the nest. This is the same stuff in head-lice shampoo you put on your kid.
if treated cotton is placed only in the habitats of endangered finches not others. Knutie and Clayton conducted the study with University of Utah doctoral students Sabrina Mcnew and Andrew Bartlow and with Daniela Vargas now of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
and Clayton say their method might help the endangered mangrove finches with only 60 cotton dispensers needed to cover the less than half a square mile inhabited by the birds on Isabela Island.
if mangrove finches will collect cotton balls from dispensers. There are other species of birds that are hurt by parasites
Hawaiian honeycreepers infested with feather lice birds in Puerto rico afflicted by Philornis flies and the endangered Florida scrub jay parasitized by fleas.
The same method might be used for the black-tailed prairie dog--removed from the endangered species list
Finches Nipping at a Clotheslinethe new study was done in the Galapagos islands where the diversity of finches helped inspire Charles darwin's theory of evolution after he visited in the 1830s.
when she noticed Darwin's finches were coming to my laundry line grabbing frayed fibers from the line and taking it away presumably back to their nests she recalls.
Parasitic nest flies lay their eggs in finch nests which have shaped dome roofs of woven plant fibers.
and on mother finches brooding their eggs and nestlings. Past studies found that in some years maggots kill all the nestlings in nests they parasitize
if finches could be encouraged to pick up treated cotton to fumigate their own nests located in tree cacti and acacia trees.
In another preliminary test the researchers showed that the finches which are territorial travel no more than 55 feet from their nests to collect nest-building material.
and dispensers were 130 feet apart--more than twice 55 feet making it likely each nesting finch had a favorite dispenser.
The researchers searched for active finch nests weekly within 65 feet of each dispenser using a camera on a pole to check each nest
They found cotton balls were collected by at least four species of Darwin's finches: the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) small ground finch (Geospiza fuliginosa) small tree finch (Camarhynchus parvulus) and vegetarian finch (Platyspiza crassirostris.
In some cases researchers were unsure which species occupied a nest. After birds in a given nest finished breeding (within three weeks) and left the nest the scientists collected the nest dissected it counted the number of parasitic fly maggots
In addition to the insects Zurek and his research team have showed also that wild birds such as ravens
and crows carry multi-drug antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Wild birds can pick up the antibiotic resistant bacteria from fields where animal manure was used as a fertilizer he said.
A total of 1105 count surveys conducted between 2007 and 2011 in wetlands ranging in size from 0. 04--6. 0 square kilometers resulted in 1305 detections of target species with yellow-bellied flycatcher
(30 percent) Lincoln's sparrow (23 percent) and yellow palm warbler (20 percent) detected most often
and fewer detections of black-backed woodpecker (8 percent) gray jay (8 percent) olive-sided flycatcher (6 percent) boreal chickadee (3 percent) and rusty blackbird (2 percent).
Patterns of species occurrence from year to year indicated that these birds function as metapopulations (spatially separated members of the same species that interact with one another through migration in and out of habitat patches.
two appeared stable and only Lincoln's sparrow and palm warbler appeared to be increasing in the Adirondack landscape.
However data collected since the study indicate that the situation may be getting worse. When I incorporate data collected since 2011 I am seeing declines for all species except palm warbler some modest
but some of them more troubling said Michale Glennon. The number of boreal wetlands occupied by five species--rusty blackbird gray jay yellow-bellied flycatcher olive-sided flycatcher
and black-backed woodpecker--has decreased by 15 percent or more since 2007. Glennon also looked at
and displacement from more cosmopolitan birds like blue jays which tend to come along with residential development.
In addition to songbirds and woodpeckers boreal wetlands provide critical habitat for other park icons like moose loon and marten.
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