Birds in Europe: Their conservation status

All animals face the possibility of limitations in food resources that could ultimately lead to starvation-induced mortality. The primary goal of this review is to characterize the various physiological strategies that allow different animals to survive starvation. The ancillary goals of this work are to identify areas in which investigations of starvation can be improved and to discuss recent advances and emerging directions in starvation research. The ubiquity of food limitation among animals, inconsistent terminology associated with starvation and fasting, and rationale for scientific investigations into starvation are discussed. Similarities and differences with regard to carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism during starvation are also examined in a comparative context. Examples from the literature are used to underscore areas in which reporting and statistical practices, particularly those involved with starvation-induced changes in body composition and starvation-induced hypometabolism can be improved. The review concludes by highlighting several recent advances and promising research directions in starvation physiology. Because the hundreds of studies reviewed here vary so widely in their experimental designs and treatments, formal comparisons of starvation responses among studies and taxa are generally precluded; nevertheless, it is my aim to provide a starting point from which we may develop novel approaches, tools, and hypotheses to facilitate meaningful investigations into the physiology of starvation in animals.

Starvation physiology: reviewing the different strategies animals use to survive a common challenge.

Wildlife diseases are in fashion. This is creating an explosion of related knowledge. Despite this, the dynamics of both wildlife and diseases and the changes in livestock and wildlife management make it increasingly difficult to overview the current situation of wildlife diseases in Europe. This paper aims to discuss the available management possibilities and to highlight current research priorities. One area that causes severe concern to authorities is diseases largely under control in domestic populations but still existing as a reservoir in wildlife. Multihost situations are also of concern for wildlife management and conservation, as diseases can affect the productivity and density of wildlife populations with an economic or recreational value. Concern about emerging diseases is rising in recent years, and these may well occur at the fertile livestock-wildlife interface. Wildlife-related zoonoses are a diverse and complex issue that requires a close collabora- tion between wildlife ecologists, veterinarians and public health professionals. A few risk factors can be identified in most of the relevant wildlife diseases. Among them are (1) the introduction of diseases through movements or trans- locations of wild or domestic animals, (2) the consequences of wildlife overabundance, (3) the risks of open air livestock breeding, (4) vector expansion and (5) the expansion or introduction of hosts. Wildlife disease control requires the integration of veterinary, ecology and wildlife management expertise. In addition to surveillance, attempts to control wildlife diseases or to avoid disease transmission between wildlife and livestock have been based on setting up barriers, culling, hygienic measures, habitat manage- ment, vector control, treatments and vaccination. Surveil- lance and descriptive studies are still valuable in regions, species or diseases that have received less attention or are (at least apparently) emerging. Nonetheless, limiting the research effort to the mere reporting of wildlife disease outbreaks is of limited value if management recommenda- tions are not given at the same time. Thus, more experimental approaches are needed to produce substantial knowledge that enables authorities to make targeted management recommendations. This requires policy mak- ers to be more aware of the value of science and to provide extra-funding for the establishment of multidisciplinary scientific teams.

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Diseases shared between wildlife and livestock: a European perspective

There has been a dramatic growth in research on biological invasions over the past 20 years, but a mature understanding of the field has been hampered because invasion biologists concerned with different taxa and different environments have largely adopted different model frameworks for the invasion process, resulting in a confusing range of concepts, terms and definitions. In this review, we propose a unified framework for biological invasions that reconciles and integrates the key features of the most commonly used invasion frameworks into a single conceptual model that can be applied to all human-mediated invasions. The unified framework combines previous stage-based and barrier models, and provides a terminology and categorisation for populations at different points in the invasion process.

A proposed unified framework for biological invasions.

In this article I evaluate recent attempts to illuminate the human infant cry from an evolutionary perspective. Infants are born into an uncertain parenting environment, which can range from indulgent care of offspring to infanticide. Infant cries are in large part adaptations that maintain proximity to and elicit care from caregivers. Although there is not strong evidence for acoustically distinct cry types, infant cries may function as a graded signal. During pain-induced autonomic nervous system arousal, for example, neural input to the vocal cords increases cry pitch. Caregivers may use this acoustic information, together with other cues, to guide caregiving behavior. Serious pathology, on the other hand, results in chronically and severely abnormal cry acoustics. Such abnormal crying may be a proximate cause of adaptive infant maltreatment, in circumstances in which parents cut their losses and reduce or withdraw investment from infants with low survival chances. An increase in the amount of crying during the first few months of life is a human universal, and excessive crying, or colic, represents the upper end of this normal increase. Potential signal functions of excessive crying include manipulation of parents to acquire additional resources, honest signaling of need, and honest signaling of vigor. Current evidence does not strongly support any one of these hypotheses, but the evidence is most consistent with the hypothesis that excessive early infant crying is a signal of vigor that evolved to reduce the risk of a reduction or withdrawal of parental care.

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The signal functions of early infant crying.

The simplification and homogenisation of agricultural landscapes has led to dramatic losses of farmland biodiversity. This decline includes passerine populations and one of the mechanisms that may be contributing toward this may be increased nest predation. Ground covers are agri-environmental measures whose objective is to halt the loss of biodiversity by creating high-quality habitat patches embedded in a homogeneous landscape by maintaining herbaceous ground cover within crops. However, although such patches are selected by breeding birds, they may also attract predators, and an increased nest density in small habitat patches would thus result in increased predation rates. We have therefore performed nest predation experiments with artificial nests in order to investigate whether the effect of ground cover on nest predation is density dependent. The experiments were carried out during the breeding season in 2014, in two areas of olive groves in southern Spain. We used two nest density levels, both in olive groves with ground cover and in those where the ground was bare. A total of 420 nests were placed, 226 of which (53.81%) suffered predation. Our results showed that 1) nest predation was density dependent in olive groves with ground cover only with respect to tree nests, while there was no density-dependent predation in bare-ground olive groves of either ground-based or tree nests, and 2) artificial nests placed on the ground were more frequently depredated (65%) than those placed in trees (29%), irrespective of either the presence of vegetation cover or nest density. This study suggests that variations in patterns of nest predation are determined by the identity of nest predators and their specific foraging behaviours in different landscapes and habitats. It also underscores the need to implement agri-environmental measures aimed at the conservation of farmland birds.

https://bioone.org/journals/ardeola/volume-63/issue-2/arla.63.2.2016.ra1/The-Influence-of-Nest-Density-on-Nest-Predation-in-Olive/10.13157/arla.63.2.2016.ra1.pdf

The Influence of Nest Density on Nest Predation in Olive Groves Depends on Habitat Features

Trabajo presentado en el ELS 2014 Conference ("The Earth Living Skin: Soil, Life and Climate Changes", celebrada en Castellaneta (Italia) del 22 al 25 de septiembre de 2014.

The role of cover crop and hedges in intensive olive orchards: Preventing soil erosion and promoting biodiversity

Natural and anthropogenic-induced stressors affecting the composition of fish communities on the rocky reefs of Ecuador.

Abstract Olive groves in the Mediterranean basin have undergone a tremendous increase during the last two decades, with most of the new olive groves being planted on arable land. This conversion may affect habitat suitability for steppe birds, which are associated with arable land and other open-land habitats, such as natural pastures. In this work, we evaluate the presence of new olive groves in the distribution of the Great Bustard Otis tarda and the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax in Southern Spain (the largest olive oil production zone in the world), and we compare the percentage of different land uses in 2000 and 2018 using data provided by the Corine Land Cover. From 2000 to 2018, new olive groves occupied 2.14 and 2.61% of the distribution areas of the Great Bustard and the Little Bustard, respectively. The decrease in arable land and the increase in permanent crops were the main drivers of the landscape composition changes during the study period. The fragmentation index of arable land was higher in 2018 than 2000. These changes in the landscape suggest a decrease in habitat availability and suitability for steppe birds that could affect the distribution and abundance of their populations. Moreover, there were no differences in the proportion of new olive groves planted inside and outside the limits of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) from 2000 to 2018, which were created to protect these steppe birds, thus suggesting that the management policy of the IBAs should be reviewed to prevent harmful land-use changes.

The expansion of olive groves is reducing habitat suitability for the Great Bustard Otis tarda and the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax in Southern Spain: could Important Bird Areas (IBAs) reduce this expansion?

Francisco S. Tortosa

Papers

The Influence of Nest Density on Nest Predation in Olive Groves Depends on Habitat Features

The role of cover crop and hedges in intensive olive orchards: Preventing soil erosion and promoting biodiversity

Natural and anthropogenic-induced stressors affecting the composition of fish communities on the rocky reefs of Ecuador.

The expansion of olive groves is reducing habitat suitability for the Great Bustard Otis tarda and the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax in Southern Spain: could Important Bird Areas (IBAs) reduce this expansion?

Detección de mesocarnívoros en zonas agrícolas del sur de España mediante trampeo fotográfico en puntos de agua