Alistair Dawson

TL;DR: This review examines how birds use the annual cycle in photoperiod to ensure that seasonal events—breeding, molt, and song production—happen at the appropriate time of year.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a standardized assessment of 25 532 rates of phenological change for 726 UK terrestrial, freshwater and marine taxa and trophic levels and show that the majority of spring and summer events have advanced, and more rapidly than previously documented.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors showed that decreasing the daylength of moulting in European starlings reduced the duration of moult from 103 +/- 4 days to 73 +/- 3 days (p < 0.0001).

TL;DR: Future integrated studies are required to assess the scope for flexibility in life-history strategies as this will have a critical bearing on whether birds can adapt sufficiently rapidly to anthropogenic environmental changes, in particular climate change.

TL;DR: The detection of specific neutralizing antibodies to WNV in birds provides a plausible explanation for the lack of evidence of a decrease in the bird population in the UK compared with North America.