Urbanisation is a common cause of the loss of biological diversity. The most diverse natural areas in urban centres are city parks. The aim of this study was to examine the importance of songbirds for park visitors, the environment, and biodiversity...
Songbirds widely disperse ticks that carry a diversity of pathogens, some of which are pathogenic to humans. Among ticks commonly removed from songbirds, the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, can harbor any combination of nine zoonotic pathogens,...
Lyme disease has been documented in northern areas of Canada, but the source of the etiological bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (Bbsl) has been in doubt. We collected 87 ticks from 44 songbirds during 2017, and 24 (39%) of 62 nymphs of the...
This study provides a novel method of documenting established populations of bird-feeding ticks. Single populations of the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, and the rabbit tick, Haemaphysalis leporispalustris, were revealed in southwestern Qu&eacu...
To understand the social interactions among songbirds, extracting the timing, position, and acoustic properties of their vocalizations is essential. We propose a framework for automatic and fine-scale extraction of spatial-spectral-temporal patterns...
Many temperate passerine bird species switch from diets of mostly invertebrates in the spring and summer to diets that include fruit and seeds in the fall and winter. However, relatively few studies have quantified diet composition or the extent of s...
The context and outcome of aggressive interactions between individuals has important fitness consequences. Displacements—an aggressive interaction wherein one individual is chased from a location by another—also have implications for soci...
Indonesia is at the epicenter of the Asian Songbird Crisis, i.e., the recognition that the cage bird trade has a devastating impact on numerous imperiled bird species in Asia. The Javan pied starling Gracupica jalla, only in the last five years recog...
The neural processes of bird song and song development have become a model for research relevant to human acquisition of language, but in fact, very few avian species have been tested for lateralization of the way in which their audio-vocal system is...
While native grass and shrub restoration is often promoted for bird conservation, evaluations are necessary to understand the effects of habitat change on songbird vital rates and migratory stopover use. We evaluated the effects of native vegetation...
The female-specific W chromosomes of most Neognathae birds are highly degenerated and gene-poor. Previous studies have demonstrated that the gene repertoires of the Neognathae bird W chromosomes, despite being in small numbers, are conserved across b...
Attention is defined as the ability to process selectively one aspect of the environment over others and is at the core of all cognitive processes such as learning, memorization, and categorization. Thus, evaluating and comparing attentional characte...
In the early summer of 2012, sudden mass mortality among songbirds, particularly in greenfinches (Chloris chloris, syn: Carduelis chloris) was observed in Austria, which was caused by the protozoan parasite Trichomonas gallinae. This pathogen induced...
The microbiota’s alteration is an adaptive mechanism observed in wild animals facing high selection pressure, especially in captive environments. The objective of this study is to compare and predict the potential impact of habitat on the fecal...
Climate change has been linked to distribution shifts and population declines of numerous animal and plant species, particularly in montane ecosystems. The majority of studies suggest both that low-elevation avian and small mammal species are shiftin...
Rat control using anticoagulant rodenticides on livestock farms is a widely applied practice worldwide. Birds can be exposed to rodenticides through direct ingestion or secondary poisoning, resulting in mortality or sublethal health effects. While im...
In recent years, several automated and noninvasive methods for wildlife monitoring, such as passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), have emerged. PAM consists of the use of acoustic sensors followed by sound interpretation to obtain ecological information...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) encompasses a range of neurodevelopmental conditions characterized by impairments in social abilities and communication. Studying appropriate animal models can enhance our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlyi...
Drones are now widely used to study wildlife, but their application in the study of bioacoustics is limited. Drones can be used to collect data on bird vocalizations, but an ongoing concern is that noise from drones could change bird vocalization beh...
The wildlife trade has facilitated the introduction of invasive non-native species, which may compete with native species for resources and alter ecosystems. Some of these species have great potential to become invasive if released or escaped from ca...
Elevated perches allow songbirds to better transmit their songs and increase the visibility of territorial displays, but there is a cost: increased predation risk. To investigate how grassland birds evaluate these tradeoffs, we placed artificial perc...
The striatal region Area X plays an important role during song learning, sequencing, and variability in songbirds. A previous study revealed that neurotoxic damage within Area X results in micro and macrostructural changes across the entire brain, in...
It is challenging to disentangle the legal and illegal aspects of wild-caught animals that are traded in wildlife markets or online, and this may diminish the value of conducting wildlife trade surveys. We present empirical studies on the trade in bi...
Located at the crossroads of two continents and at the southeastern edge of the Mediterranean Basin, Anatolia was one of the most important Pleistocene glacial refugia in the Western Palaearctic. As part of the Irano-Anatolian, Caucasus and Mediterra...
Winter bird feeders provide high-energy food for birds when natural food resources are in short supply. We performed an experimental study including two treatments and a control to investigate the reactions of eight passerine species visiting a winte...
Urbanization is expanding rapidly worldwide, and brings additional selection pressure on animals. The song differences between urban and rural songbirds have been widely verified, but the effects of urban morphological variation on long-settled urban...
Young territorial songbirds have calls to learn, especially calls that may be vital for maintaining territory. Territoriality is largely reinforced and communicated by vocal signals. In their natal territory, juvenile magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) enj...
Human-caused changes to habitats like forestry practices and traffic noise can negatively influence antipredator and foraging behavior in animals. These behavior patterns are also frequently positively influenced by individuals being part of mixed-sp...
There are two most heavily used markers of cell proliferation, thymidine analogues 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU) and 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxyuridine (EdU) that are incorporated into the DNA during its synthesis. In neurosciences, they are ofte...
Birdsong is a precisely timed animal behavior. The connectivity of song premotor neural networks has been proposed to underlie the temporal patterns of neuronal activity that control vocal muscle movements during singing. Although the connectivity of...
Thresholds can be an effective tool in conservation planning, as they can form a defensible target for habitat conservation or restoration. Generalized thresholds must be used with caution, however, as threshold responses may vary with species and sp...
Lateralisation of eye use indicates differential specialisation of the brain hemispheres. We tested eye use by zebra finches to view a model predator, a monitor lizard, and compared this to eye use to view a non-threatening visual stimulus, a jar. We...
The last decade was marked by a steep rise in avian studies at genomic and cellular levels. Cell lines are important tools for in vitro studies in cell biology and cytogenetics. We developed a simple method of primary somatic cell culture establishme...
Birds in agricultural environments have exhibited steep global population declines in recent decades, and effective conservation strategies targeting their populations are urgently needed. In grasslands used for hay production, breeding birds’ nest s...
The ability to rapidly respond to wildlife health events is essential. However, such events are often unpredictable, especially with anthropogenic disturbances and climate-related environmental changes driving unforeseen threats. Many events also are...
Passerines are the most successfully diversified bird order (around 60% of all avian species). They have developed complicated songs to defend their territories and to attract females for mating that can evolve quickly due to cultural transmission. C...
This study investigated the distribution of 29 legacy and emerging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in soil, nettles, invertebrates, and plasma and feathers of great tits (Parus major) of a terrestrial ecosystem near a fluorochemical plant...
Music is an exclusive feature of humankind. It can be considered as a form of universal communication, only partly comparable to the vocalizations of songbirds. Many trends of research in this field try to address music origins, as well as the geneti...
Wild birds transport ticks into Canada that harbor a diversity of zoonotic pathogens. However, medical practitioners often question how these zoonotic pathogens are present in their locality. In this study, we provide the first report of an Amblyomma...
Urban biodiversity is crucial for ecological security, balance, and important for fostering awareness on human-nature interconnectedness among the public. The diversity of birds, as an urban ecosystem indicator, reflects ecosystem services and is imp...
Comparisons between the communication systems of humans and animals are instrumental in contextualizing speech and language into an evolutionary and biological framework and for illuminating mechanisms of human communication. As a complement to previ...
Invasive smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) has been expanding rapidly through the coastal wetlands of eastern China and these changes negatively affect local birds. In the Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve (henceforth referred to as DMNNR),...
Tick-borne pathogens cause infectious diseases that inflict much societal and financial hardship worldwide. Blacklegged ticks, Ixodes scapularis, are primary vectors of several epizootic and zoonotic pathogens. The aim was to find varius pathogens of...
Artificial light at night (ALAN) and noise pollution are two important stressors associated with urbanisation that can have a profound impact on animal behaviour and physiology, potentially disrupting biological rhythms. Although the influence of ALA...
Birds may alter song structure in response to territorial challenges to convey information about aggressive intent or fighting ability. Professional and amateur ornithologists upload daily many birdsong recordings into acoustic data repositories, usu...
Cooperative breeding, or helping behavior, has long been recognized in birds. An ignored dichotomy, however, separates the helping found in many individuals of some long-lived, sedentary species from the helping occasionally found in the territories...
Yellow-throated bunting is a small migratory songbird unique to the Palearctic region. However, the genetic studies of this species remain limited, with no nuclear genomic sequence reported to date. In this study, the genomic DNA from the bird was se...
Model optimization in neuroscience has focused on inferring intracellular parameters from time series observations of the membrane voltage and calcium concentrations. These parameters constitute the fingerprints of ion channel subtypes and may identi...
Songbirds are one of the study targets for both bioacoustic and ecoacoustic research. In this paper, we discuss the applicability of robot audition techniques to understand the dynamics of forest bird vocalizations in a soundscape measured in azimuth...
The arrangement of habitat features via historical or contemporary events can strongly influence genomic and demographic connectivity, and in turn affect levels of genetic diversity and resilience of populations to environmental perturbation. The rus...
of 2