Immigration and Recruitment in an Urban White-Winged Dove Breeding Colony

Abstract

Dove population management necessitates estimates of vital rates for use in mechanistic models used to evaluate and predict population responses to environmental variation and/or alternative harvest scenarios. Estimating recruitment (number of juveniles per adult) is complicated because a compendium of factors drives production in doves. White-winged doves Zenaida asiatica exhibit a fairly unique breeding strategy wherein they commonly return to the same breeding area and reproduce in large breeding aggregations (i.e., colonies). We used an open-population capture–recapture model to estimate annual immigration and in situ recruitment of white-winged doves breeding in an urban colony during 2009 and 2010. We captured 5,101 unique white-winged doves in 2009 (2,894 after hatch year, 2,207 hatch year) and 3,502 unique white-winged doves in 2010 (3,106 after hatch year, 486 hatch year). Immigration of adults into the breeding colony peaked during late April and early May, with in situ recruitment occurring during a 6-wk period from 19 June to 30 July. Our results predicted that >90% of all hatch-year individuals had entered the local population by 1 August. The Jolly–Seber model used allows white-winged dove recruitment values to be estimated directly (rather than as a conglomerate of multiple parameters), separates immigration from in situ recruitment within a season, and can be useful for monitoring recruitment and evaluating alternative recruitment indices for future use in harvest management-planning actions.

Rangeland Health Assessment: A Useful Tool for Linking Range Management and Grassland Bird Conservation?

“…If there are no specifications found for a particular model parameter, it is not included in the list and when it is passed to make.mark.model, the default specification will be used for that parameter. Collier et al (2012). We used a Huggins closed capture model implemented in MARK http://www.phidot.…”

“…In addition to detailing the analysis used by Collier et al (2012), this example documents the use of the share argument in the RMark parameter specification because there is presently very little documentation on the use of share. Parameters in MARK models rarely share columns of the design matrix.…”

“…Important to note, in case you don't read Collier et al (2012), is the fact that the 2010 dataset is kind of screwy relative to the estimation of the entry parameters for HY wwdo. Basically, what happened was we caught a bunch of AHY birds, but when we captured HY birds, we only caught a few (~400 in 2010) and of those we captured, we rarely, if ever had any recaptures.…”

Spatial and temporal patterns of range expansion of white‐winged doves in the USA from 1979 to 2007

“…arroyos, rivers; Cottam & Trefethen, ; Schwertner et al ., ) while in southern Texas, white‐winged doves historically nested in native scrub‐oak forests and in citrus orchards (George et al ., ; Schwertner et al ., ). However, concomitant with the loss of these native habitats, white‐winged doves now are more likely to colonize, and therefore occupy, urban areas across the southern USA (Figs & ; Schwertner et al ., ; Collier et al ., ).…”

Pilot Study for Aging Classification Criteria of Fledged Juvenile Eastern White-winged Doves

“…Because age ratios provide valuable information on vital rates that are needed to make harvest management decisions (Collier et al 2013), our goal was to examine various molting features of known-age juvenile whitewinged doves. The objectives were to 1) monitor primary feather replacement, persistence of immature primary coverts, and development of eye-ring color, neck-bar color, and leg color of captive fledged juveniles, 2) evaluate these features for their usefulness in aging, and 3) develop an aging key using the most reliable features.…”