Population changes in Czech passerines are predicted by their life‐history and ecological traits

Reif, Jiří; Vermouzek, Zdeněk; Voříšek, Petr; Šťastný, Karel; Bejček, Vladimír; Flousek, Jiří

doi:10.1111/j.1474-919x.2010.01036.x

Cited by 27 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…; Czech Republic, Reif et al . ). If we divide the long‐distance migrants monitored by the PECBMS into those associated with farmland and those in other habitats, and examine their grouped‐species trends, there is a suggestion that farmland migrants have fared worse than the others, but the trends are not significantly different (Fig.…”

Section: Population Trends Of Afro‐palaearctic Migrantsmentioning

confidence: 97%

The decline ofAfro‐Palaearctic migrants and an assessment of potential causes

Vickery

Ewing

Smith

et al. 2013

Ibis

359

413

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There is compelling evidence that Afro-Palaearctic (A-P) migrant bird populations have declined in Europe in recent decades, often to a greater degree than resident or shortdistance migrants. There appear to have been two phases of decline. The first in the 1960s-1970s, and in some cases into the early 1980s, largely affected species wintering predominantly in the arid Sahelian zone, and the second since the 1980s has mostly affected species wintering in the humid tropics and Guinea forest zone. Potential drivers of these declines are diverse and are spread across and interact within the migratory cycle. Our knowledge of declining species is generally better for the breeding than the non-breeding parts of their life cycles, but there are significant gaps in both for many species. On the breeding grounds, degradation of breeding habitats is the factor affecting the demography of the largest number of species, particularly within agricultural systems and woodland and forests. In the non-breeding areas, the interacting factors of anthropogenic habitat degradation and climatic conditions, particularly drought in the Sahel zone, appear to be the most important factors. Based on our synthesis of existing information, we suggest four priorities for further research: (1) use of new and emerging tracking technologies to identify migratory pathways and strategies, understand migratory connectivity and enable field research to be targeted more effectively; (2) undertake detailed field studies in sub-Saharan Africa and at staging sites, where we understand little about distribution patterns, habitat use and foraging ecology; (3) make better use of the wealth of data from the European breeding grounds to explore spatial and temporal patterns in demographic parameters and relate these to migratory pathways and large-scale patterns of habitat change and climatic factors; and (4) make better use of remote sensing to improve our understanding of how and where land cover is changing across these extensive areas and how this impacts A-P migrants. This research needs to inform and underpin a flyway approach to conservation, evaluating a suite of drivers across the migratory cycle and combining this with an understanding of land management practices that integrate the needs of birds and people in these areas.

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Section: Population Trends Of Afro‐palaearctic Migrantsmentioning

confidence: 97%

The decline ofAfro‐Palaearctic migrants and an assessment of potential causes

Vickery

Ewing

Smith

et al. 2013

Ibis

359

413

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similarly, previous studies on European bird species found that the magnitude of population fluctuations was related to life-history or ecological traits, such as migration [36], clutch size, or survival [30]. Specifically, resident species with large clutch size and low survival fluctuated more widely than migratory low-reproducing long-lived species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…In contrast, previous studies did not include population trend (or population growth rate) in statistical models testing for such relationships. Second, our study included data from 12 European countries covering a relatively wide range of latitudes and longitudes (from Spain to Finland), while previous studies dealt with population fluctuations in one country only (Czech Republic [36] or UK [30]). Population dynamics might differ at different spatial scales (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial, more widely distributed and less abundant bird species undergo wider population fluctuations independent of their population trend

Cuervo

Møller

2017

PLoS ONE

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Understanding temporal variability in population size is important for conservation biology because wide population fluctuations increase the risk of extinction. Previous studies suggested that certain ecological, demographic, life-history and genetic characteristics of species might be related to the degree of their population fluctuations. We checked whether that was the case in a large sample of 231 European breeding bird species while taking a number of potentially confounding factors such as population trends or similarities among species due to common descent into account. When species-specific characteristics were analysed one by one, the magnitude of population fluctuations was positively related to coloniality, habitat, total breeding range, heterogeneity of breeding distribution and natal dispersal, and negatively related to urbanisation, abundance, relative number of subspecies, parasitism and proportion of polymorphic loci. However, when abundance (population size) was included in the analyses of the other parameters, only coloniality, habitat, total breeding range and abundance remained significantly related to population fluctuations. The analysis including all these predictors simultaneously showed that population size fluctuated more in colonial, less abundant species with larger breeding ranges. Other parameters seemed to be related to population fluctuations only because of their association with abundance or coloniality. The unexpected positive relationship between population fluctuations and total breeding range did not seem to be mediated by abundance. The link between population fluctuations and coloniality suggests a previously unrecognized cost of coloniality. The negative relationship between population size and population fluctuations might be explained by at least three types of non-mutually exclusive stochastic processes: demographic, environmental and genetic stochasticity. Measurement error in population indices, which was unknown, may have contributed to the negative relationship between population size and fluctuations, but apparently only to a minor extent. The association between population size and fluctuations suggests that populations might be stabilized by increasing population size.

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“…These categories are frequently used in interspecific comparative studies (e.g. Böhning-Gaese et al 2000, Reif et al 2010. As the information about diet of the focal species was only available as a qualitative description in the text of del Hoyo et al (1992Hoyo et al ( -20022003, we identified a given species as a carnivore, insectivore or herbivore, respectively, if some food sources from a given diet category were explicitly described as its main food (e.g.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Global analysis of threat status reveals higher extinction risk in tropical than in temperate bird sister species

Reif¹,

Štěpánková²

2016

European Journal of Ecology

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Global analysis of threat status reveals higher extinction risk in tropical than in temperate bird sister species EJE 2016EJE , 2(1): 21-34, doi: 10.1515EJE /eje-2016 Jiří Reif 1,2* , Klára Štěpánková 1 Given increasing pressures upon biodiversity, identification of species' traits related to elevated extinction risk is useful for more efficient allocation of limited resources for nature conservation. Despite its need, such a global analysis was lacking in the case of birds. Therefore, we performed this exercise for avian sister species using information about their global extinction risk from IUCN Red List. We focused on 113 pairs of sister species, each containing a threatened and an unthreatened species to factor out the effects of common evolutionary history on the revealed relationship. We collected data on five traits with expected relationships to species' extinction risk based on previous studies performed at regional or national levels: breeding habitat (recognizing forest, grassland, wetland and oceanic species), latitudinal range position (temperate and tropics species), migration strategy (migratory and resident species), diet (carnivorous, insectivorous, herbivorous and omnivorous species) and body mass. We related the extinction risk using IUCN threat level categories to species' traits using generalised linear mixed effects models expecting lower risk for forest, temperate, omnivorous and smaller-bodied species. Our expectation was confirmed only in the case of latitudinal range position, as we revealed higher threat level for tropical than for temperate species. This relationship was robust to different methods of threat level expression and cannot be explained by a simple association of high bird species richness with the tropical zone. Instead, it seems that tropical species are more threatened because of their intrinsic characteristics such as slow life histories, adaptations to stable environments and small geographic ranges. These characteristics are obviously disadvantageous in conditions of current human-induced environmental perturbations. Moreover, given the absence of habitat effects, our study indicates that such perturbations act across different tropical environments. Therefore, disproportionally higher conservation effort in the tropics compared to the temperate zone is urgently needed. INTRODUCTION ABSTRACTBiodiversity, bird, threat, species' traits, sister species, tropics KEYWORDS

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Population changes in Czech passerines are predicted by their life‐history and ecological traits

Cited by 27 publications

References 65 publications

The decline ofAfro‐Palaearctic migrants and an assessment of potential causes

The decline ofAfro‐Palaearctic migrants and an assessment of potential causes

Colonial, more widely distributed and less abundant bird species undergo wider population fluctuations independent of their population trend

Global analysis of threat status reveals higher extinction risk in tropical than in temperate bird sister species

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