Ibis最新文献

Avian begging calls mediate parent–offspring conflict and direct parental care to genetically related progeny. We found that the fundamental frequency of begging calls of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus decreases as the penguins age and gain mass, before reaching a lower plateau when the chick reaches about 1 kg. Our results suggest that the food solicitation signals of this species may inform parents of the offspring's body mass. Our results may also lead to the development of non-invasive tools for facilitating censusing chick growth in wild colonies.

Vegetation structural complexity surrounding nests can either provide concealment for intruders and mates or make it more difficult for hosts to recognize parasitic eggs. We investigated whether shading and vegetation aggregation increase extrapair paternity (the presence of broods with half-siblings) and intraspecific brood parasitism (IBP, the occurrence of broods with unrelated offspring) in socially monogamous Blue-black Grassquits Volatinia jacarina. We found that habitat shadowing was associated with increased occurrence of IBP, but found no association between the degree of shade and the presence of extrapair offspring. Our findings support the idea that habitat limits cryptic reproductive behaviours and that female grassquits may benefit from habitat shadows to parasitize conspecific nests.

Jarrett, D., Lehikoinen, A. & Willis, S. 2024. Monitoring wader breeding productivity. Ibis 166: 780–800.

The following changes were made to the above published article.

The name of the third author should be “Stephen G. Willis”, not “Steve Willis”.

The name of the host institute for Jarrett and Willis should have been the ‘Department of Biosciences’ and not the ‘School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences’.

Finally, the acknowledgements section should have stated that “This work was funded by Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Studentship Grant DS-2017-070 (Interdisciplinary Understanding for a Changing Arctic)”.

The original published article has been updated to reflect these changes.

We apologize for this error.

Recently, there has been increased focus on the origins and history of common names for organisms, especially birds. Of particular interest are eponymous common names that reflect our colonial past. While identification of alternative names can be straightforward for some species, for those that migrate across jurisdictions including the lands of multiple Traditional Owner/Indigenous groups, reaching consensus on a single name that reflects the features of the species and their cultural importance can be substantially more complex. Using the migratory Ardenna carneipes as a case study, we propose a new common name (Sable Shearwater) for the species and discuss the many challenges that others will need to consider when navigating this important yet sensitive space.

The recognition of individual variation has fundamental implications for ecological, evolutionary and biodiversity conservation. There is increasing theoretical interest in how spatial and temporal variation in the environment can create differences in the demographic contribution of individuals over space and time. However, empirical information about the characteristics of the environmental drivers of key vital rates and their spatiotemporal variation is still scarce. Here, we used data generated by a monitoring scheme (1990–2015) of a population of a long-lived territorial avian predator, Bonelli's Eagle Aquila fasciata, which included estimations of individuals' diet through stable isotope analysis (2008–15), to evaluate whether temporal consistency in spatially structured dietary patterns affects key demographic parameters, namely productivity and survival, at territory scales. We found strong within-population heterogeneity in survival and reproduction rates associated with Eagle territories, with territory average values ranging, respectively, from 0.58 to 1.00 and from 0 to 1.71 for the overall study period. Reproduction and survival were predictable over, respectively, 4- and 3-year periods for the bulk of the population, which suggests that the environmental drivers of these vital rates changed at these temporal scales. Interestingly, the characteristics of and the temporal variation in the diets of territorial individuals during these periods were associated with their survival and reproduction. Based on these findings, we suggest that spatial and temporal variations in trophic scenarios potentially act as meaningful drivers of intrapopulation demographic heterogeneity.