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Simple Summary: In this paper, we present the first diagnostic of the wintering birds in the wetlands of the Saïss plain and its adjacent Atlas Mountains (north–center of Morocco). The study revealed an unexpected diversity of bird species, for which we provide the population size, with their variations, over five years (2017–2018 to 2022–2023). Among these birds, we found four remarkable species: Oxyura leucocephala (endangered), Aythya ferina (vulnerable), Aythya nyroca (near-threatened) and Limosa limosa (near-threatened). In addition, we illustrated the wetland changes during the last 20 years (2003–2023), mainly the habitat loss for wintering waterbirds. Moroccan wetlands host up to half a million wintering birds and provide a stopover for tens of thousands of migrants, while they are inhabited by few nesting species. Most of this avifauna prefers to use the large coastal wetlands or reservoirs, while many species are dispersed across hundreds of small inland wetlands of various types. In this study, we monitored the wintering avifauna of 11 wetlands of the Saïss plain and its adjacent Atlas Mountains (north–center of Morocco), during six wintering seasons (2017–2018 to 2022–2023), with the objective of assessing the importance of this region as a waterbird wintering area. Using the richness of the species, we determine the bird population changes during this pentad and between the different types of wetlands (natural, human-made, and natural wetlands). During this study, we recorded 51 species, belonging to 17 families, among which exist four remarkable birds: the endangered Oxyura leucocephala, the vulnerable Aythya ferina and the near-threatened Aythya nyroca and Limosa limosa. Bird diversity is higher in human-made ecosystems than in peri-urban and natural ecosystems, while the populations' size is similar in urban and non-urban wetlands. With regard to bird conservation, these inland wetlands, mainly the small ones, are threatened by recurrent droughts and various anthropic stressors, which we describe using our observations of the two last decades (2003–2023). The loss of habitat is significant, reaching 348.5 hectares, while the impacts of reduced precipitation and temperature increase are particularly evident in the mountainous natural lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global biodiversity crisis and constantly growing human impact on the natural environment call for more evidence where conservation actions are the most urgent. As the agricultural lands are under increased pressure of growing human food needs here the literature survey on farmland bird conservation (FBC) was conducted to reveal geographical distribution in research intensity, the topics addressed and to identify potential drivers for the worldwide scientific effort. The Scopus database search has revealed 2290 papers dedicated to FBC from the period 1990-2020. The distribution was spatially uneven with most papers published in Western Europe and North America. Scientific collaboration was also spatially biased in favor of countries located close to each other and having high scientific capacity. The analysis also revealed 139 terms representing main topics raised in FBC research. The number of FBC papers per country was positively correlated with Gross Domestic Production (GDP), the total number of scientific papers, and number of threatened species, and negatively with the GDP from agricultural production, whereas it was not related to area of agricultural lands or bird species richness. Spatial and thematic biases in studies of farmland birds may have important consequences since uneven scientific evidence constrains development of proper conservation solutions and limits their implementation. We conclude that research on FBC should be globally coordinated and flexible enough to undertake burning conservation problems adjusted to regional differences in agriculture, socio-economy, and bird diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Poultry meat is an affordable, lean source of animal protein. Where does it come from? Broilers (meat chickens) or turkeys raised on farms stem from core breeding families, which are crossed to generate commercial hybrids. It takes around four years for the birds from the core families to the birds on the farms. Over time, poultry breeding has developed from primarily looking at production (e.g., live weight and egg production) to balanced, holistic breeding, including a wide range of attributes (e.g., gait, leg health, robustness and cardiovascular health). All birds in the core breeding families are carefully measured for over forty items covering bird health and welfare, robustness, environmental impact, reproduction and production. Modern poultry breeding aims for the holistic improvement of all the traits included in a broad and balanced breeding goal. New and improved selection techniques and analytical tools are continuously developed to allow increases in the accuracy of selection's long-term progress. There are different broiler and turkey genotypes for different market requirements, and commercial portfolios will continue evolving with future markets and customer preferences. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the history of commercial poultry breeding, from domestication to the development of science and commercial breeding structures. The development of breeding goals over time, from mainly focusing on production to broad goals, including bird welfare and health, robustness, environmental impact, biological efficiency and reproduction, is detailed. The paper outlines current breeding goals, including traits (e.g., on foot and leg health, contact dermatitis, gait, cardiovascular health, robustness and livability), recording techniques, their genetic basis and how trait these antagonisms, for example, between welfare and production, are managed. Novel areas like genomic selection and gut health research and their current and potential impact on breeding are highlighted. The environmental impact differences of various genotypes are explained. A future outlook shows that balanced, holistic breeding will continue to enable affordable lean animal protein to feed the world, with a focus on the welfare of the birds and a diversity of choice for the various preferences and cultures across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Republic of Panama has exposed 64,000 ha of lowland forest in the former Canal Zone to possible development. The forests form a 16-km-wide strip reaching 65 km from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean and function as the water supply for the canal and as home to one of the world's richest terrestrial biotas. We present an overview of the distribution of bird diversity in the forests of the canal area based on 10 years of inventories. A total of 498 terrestrial species has been recorded, of which 177 occur only in lowland forests. More species reside in Caribbean- than in Pacific-slope forests and in the largest forest tracts. The Panamanian government, recognizing the importance of the forests for protection of biodiversity and for proper functioning of the canal, has created two national parks and a national monument in the canal area. One large park, Soberania National Park, currently contains 92% of the region's forest-dwelling species. Two large tracts on the Caribbean coast, the Achiote Road forest and the Fort Sherman forest, are not designated as national parks but are recognized as important forest areas. Those two forests harbor species found nowhere else in the canal corridor. Extensive fragmentation, disconnection of forested corridors between foothills and lowlands, and anthropogenic degradation of forests near towns have altered regional bird-community dynamics. Some dynamics occur on large spatial scales, such as the poorly understood movements of elevational and transisthmian migrants. Long-term maintenance of bird species diversity in the canal area will require preservation of the large forest tracts and reestablishment of a forested connection from the canal corridor lowlands to the Chagres lowlands and foothills in the east. Such conservation activities will be challenging to execute given the region's growing human population and desires for a stronger national economy. We recommend protection of remaining forests and active enforcement of protection laws to reduce hunting and further intrusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a report about the birds of the southern part of the Algerian Sahara. A total of 62 species were recorded with direct observations in nine different localities of two regions (from Tamanrasset city to In Guezzam city), belonging to 29 families and 12 orders in 2021. Three species were recorded for the first time in Algeria, White-throated Bee-eater (Merops albicollis), Cut-throat Finch (Amadina fasciata) and Village Indigobird (Vidua chalybeata). The latter two were probably escaped from captivity. The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) were observed for the first time in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logging causes changes in habitat structure, which can potentially lead to variations in taxonomic and functional richness of biodiversity. Studies on how functional traits in birds are affected by logging operations can provide an important element for the understanding of ecosystem processes. In this paper, we examined how logging in subtropical Andean forests influenced taxonomic and functional diversity of cavity-nesting birds. We used these results to compare how logging affected ecosystem functions in temperate and subtropical forests of the Americas. We used point-counts to examine the effects of logging on taxonomic and functional traits in avian communities (Functional Richness, Functional evenness, Functional Divergence, and Community-weighted mean). We found that logging changed bird richness and abundance, although it had no effect on the functional response to the measured traits. The comparison of our results with those of temperate forests of Canada and Chile reveals differences in the functional richness of birds in these habitats, with a lower impact of logging on functional traits. We highlight the importance of including functional traits in the analyses, since the reduction in the species richness and abundance may not be translated into functional changes within the ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 15 kinds of birdsong data sets were built by ourselves. • The Mel-Sinc spectral diagram of feature fusion is proposed. • ScSEnet enhanced spectrum wavy information is embedded in the backbone network. • The proposed MFF-ScSEnet can realize better performance in bird song recognition. Bird diversity plays an important role in ecological balance, and bird song identification is of great practical significance. The spectrum generated by feature extraction shows good performance on classification. However, the information extracted by the filter in the process of spectrogram generation can cause information loss, which limits the learning ability of birdsong recognition. This study proposes a feature fusion network (MFF-ScSEnet) to solve this problem. The audios of the birdsong extracted the Mel-spectrogram with low-frequency feature advantage by the Mel-filter, and the Sinc-spectrogram with timbral feature advantage by the Sincnet-filter, respectively, and perform the early fusion strategy. The ScSEnet attention module is introduced into the backbone network ResNet18 to enhance the sound ripple information of the spectrogram, reduce the influence of spectrogram noise information on the recognition and improve the recognition performance of the network. Based on the feature fusion network MFF-ScSEnet in this paper, the accuracy of the experimental results on the self-built birdsong dataset (Huabei_dataset), the public datasets of Urbansound8K and Birdsdata reached 96.28%, 98.34%, and 96.66%, respectively. The results indicated that the method proposed in this paper is superior to the recent and latest birdsong recognition method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather, the papers published here illustrate both the diversity of flightless birds and the multifarious approaches that can be used to study them, from stratigraphy and functional anatomy to phylogenetic analysis and bone histology. In some cases, loss of flight is associated with strictly terrestrial habits in usually large forms, as in living and fossil "ratites" and in various extinct groups of giant ground birds (gastornithids, dromornithids, phorusrhacids, etc.). Although flight is often considered as one of the most salient characteristics of birds, in the course of their evolution various avian lineages have lost the ability to fly. [Extracted from the article]

• Maximising conservation benefits on state-owned land. • Quantifying land costs, ecological values and human values in an integrated climate context. • Adaptation of model parameters to research sites based on machine learning. • Ecological corridors avoiding the objective fragmentation of the Marxan model results. • Phased implementation of conservation plans. In China, especially in countries with state-owned land use rights, the loss of urban bird diversity due to rapid urbanisation can't be contained or ameliorated by equitably weighing the ecological and economic values of land. Climate change could further threaten urban bird biodiversity and ultimately lead to a "tragedy of the commons". The Beijing Ecological Cultivation Area (BECA) is one such area that has suffered from low eco-efficiency due to climate change and chaotic management. There is a need to find more effective solutions for urban bird conservation to reduce the negative impacts of rapid urbanisation while avoiding wasting more conservation costs. For this purpose, the protection priorities for BECA based on 4 global future climate models (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) for the years 2041–2060, 56 species of local resident birds in the "Beijing Terrestrial Wildlife - Birds" were used as study subjects, which were identified through systematic conservation planning (scp) with combinatorial modelling (MaxEnt-Marxan). In addition, three scenarios were innovatively developed in Marxan with maximum respect for the original land use types. The eco-efficiency and eco-corridor of these three scenarios were compared and identified through ArcGis. The results of the survey show that 'Comprehensive Conservation' has the largest mean distribution area, with the results for RCP 2.6–8.5 being: 52.34%; 65.25%; 48.34%; and 45.42%. It had the highest spatial continuity, the lowest fragmentation, and the highest conservation efficiency. Moreover, We recommend a phased implementation of the conservation plans and and suggest planning options for three landform types: High-altitude mountain; Medium or Low-altitude shallow mountainous; and Water conservation areas. It is important to establish ecological corridors from the Huairou district's northern part to the Yanqing district's northeastern part and beyond. This paper quantifies the land costs, ecological values and human impact factors of the planning area in a comprehensive climate context with the theme of conserving urban bird diversity. This study aims to maximise the conservation benefits of urban bird diversity and to provide basic research for ecological conservation on state-owned land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effects of agricultural payments on changes in farmland bird diversity in Slovenia. Diversity was measured by Shannon index, while the impacts were estimated with the first-difference estimator on panel data for municipalities with and without special protection areas for birds. The effects of agricultural payments on farmland biodiversity require that the balance of financial instruments be taken into account when the agricultural policy is being drafted. The effects of payments in municipalities with and without special protection areas indicate the need to consider the landscape perspective and adapt schemes to landscape type while preparing the national agricultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anseriformes is a well-known and widely distributed bird order, with more than 150 species in the world. This paper aims to revise the classification, determine the phylogenetic relationships and diversification patterns in Anseriformes by exploring the Cyt b, ND2, COI genes and the complete mitochondrial genomes (mito-genomes). Molecular phylogeny and genetic distance analyses suggest that the Dendrocygna species should be considered as an independent family, Dendrocygnidae, rather than a member of Anatidae. Molecular timescale analyses suggests that the ancestral diversification occurred during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (58 ~ 50 Ma). Furthermore, diversification analyses showed that, after a long period of constant diversification, the median initial speciation rate was accelerated three times, and finally increased to approximately 0.3 sp/My. In the present study, both molecular phylogeny and diversification analyses results support that Anseriformes birds underwent rapid and recent diversification in their evolutionary history, especially in modern ducks, which show extreme diversification during the Plio-Pleistocene (~ 5.3 Ma). Therefore, our study support that the Plio-Pleistocene climate fluctuations are likely to have played a significant role in promoting the recent diversification for Anseriformes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the bird assemblages of different woody vegetation types are presented in a human-modified Eastern European landscape. The studied territory is part of a Special Protection Area for bird species. The following sampling areas were included in the study: hornbeam-beech, oak-hornbeam, and sessile oak forests; thickets of willow; forests of white willow; scrubs of blackthorn and hawthorn; and orchards. Birds were grouped in a community typical of deciduous forests and in another community typical of coppices and scrubs. Bird species number, alpha diversity, and abundance were significantly higher in the Salici-Populetum association and in orchards than in the other plant associations. The value of beta diversity was highest in the Carpino-Quercetum petraeae association. The lowest spatial heterogeneity and equitability were in the Salicetum triandrae association. The Salici-Populetum association had the highest number of characteristic species. The analysis of the ecological structure of the bird communities showed that forests and orchards are more abundant in species associated with closed forest habitats than other plant associations. It can be concluded that orchards have a bird community influenced by the forest habitats. Along with forests, orchards are valuable habitats for bird species requiring designation of protected areas and species of national interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our current understanding of the vertebrate communities of a newly gazetted Tanzanian coastal national park is limited and strongly taxonomically biased towards large mammals. We conducted bird assessments in three sites in Saadani National Park using species lists to analyze some parameters to inform biodiversity conservation in the area. We recorded 3112 individuals in 268 species falling in 66 families, including 2 endangered, 2 vulnerable, and 6 near threatened species. Both species richness and species diversity varied between sites. Species relative abundances were not different between the sites although some functional groups, especially granivores, were more abundant than others. Bird assemblages included 21 forest specialists (FF-species), 35 forest generalists (F-species), and 68 forest visitors (f-species) overlapping among bushland, wooded grassland, grassland, and thickets suggesting presence of important microhabitats for the forest-associated species in this ecosystem. Bird species richness in a feeding guild also showed marked overlap between habitats suggesting availability of rich food resources for the birds. This paper highlights the importance of maintaining a structurally heterogeneous landscape to sustain diverse bird communities in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our current understanding of the vertebrate communities of a newly gazetted Tanzanian coastal national park is limited and strongly taxonomically biased towards large mammals. We conducted bird assessments in three sites in Saadani National Park using species lists to analyze some parameters to inform biodiversity conservation in the area. We recorded 3112 individuals in 268 species falling in 66 families, including 2 endangered, 2 vulnerable, and 6 near threatened species. Both species richness and species diversity varied between sites. Species relative abundances were not different between the sites although some functional groups, especially granivores, were more abundant than others. Bird assemblages included 21 forest specialists (FF-species), 35 forest generalists (F-species), and 68 forest visitors (f-species) overlapping among bushland, wooded grassland, grassland, and thickets suggesting presence of important microhabitats for the forest-associated species in this ecosystem. Bird species richness in a feeding guild also showed marked overlap between habitats suggesting availability of rich food resources for the birds. This paper highlights the importance of maintaining a structurally heterogeneous landscape to sustain diverse bird communities in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preservation of the wild animals had been reported by many researchers groups and nongovernmental organization in the world. Inside this context, many Brazilian species of macaws are focus of illegal traffic and international commerce that resulted in several deaths of birds during transport and expressive decrease of bird population. Is important to emphasize that conservation programs ex situ of wild species and environmental education, guaranteeing the preservation of the biodiversity must be incentive. Thus, the objective of this work was review and described the reproductive and maternal behaviors of Caninde macaws relating the proceedings performed in captivity of preservation localized in Assis Gurgacz Faculty, Parana, Brazil. The observations and the data registered were performed by recorded videos. The results and conditions showed in this paper may indicate methods that promote good conditions the posture, eruption and development of the nest for this species in captivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Colombian Tropical Andes are one of the regions with highest bird diversity on Earth. However, information on bird morphology, reproductive phenology, and molt is particularly scarce in this region. Also, this region is heavily impacted by deforestation, and it is vulnerable to climate change. Hence, providing baseline information on life history and morphological traits will be essential to support future research on functional diversity, climate change effects, conservation, evolution, and phenology. To fill this gap, we have compiled information on bird distribution, morphology, molt, and reproductive phenology at 52 localities of the Department of Caldas, covering an elevation range between 148 and 3845 m. This compilation comprises a wide range of habitats, including native forests, forestry plantations, croplands, and paramo. Our database presents information for 3,398 records belonging to 379 bird species (representing 23 orders, 53 families, and 258 genera). From those records, 2,843 correspond to information collected in the field between 2008 and 2019, and the remaining 555 records correspond to specimens deposited in the Natural History Museum of the Caldas University, collected between 1969 and 2014. We measured nine morphological traits from all specimens: total culmen, gape, bill width, bill depth, tarsus, wing length, tail length, total length, and mass. We also have reproductive condition information for 257 species and molt information available for 378 species. The information contained in this data set represents ~20% of the Colombian avifauna and ~11% of the bird species richness in South America. This data set is released for non‐commercial use only. Credits should be given to this paper (i.e., proper citation), and the products generated with this database should be shared under the same license terms (CC BY‐NC‐SA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have long been trying to understand why the Neotropical region holds the highest diversity of birds on Earth. Recently, there has been increased interest in morphological variation between and within species, and in how climate, topography, and anthropogenic pressures may explain and affect phenotypic variation. Because morphological data are not always available for many species at the local or regional scale, we are limited in our understanding of intra‐ and interspecies spatial morphological variation. Here, we present the ATLANTIC BIRD TRAITS, a data set that includes measurements of up to 44 morphological traits in 67,197 bird records from 2,790 populations distributed throughout the Atlantic forests of South America. This data set comprises information, compiled over two centuries (1820–2018), for 711 bird species, which represent 80% of all known bird diversity in the Atlantic Forest. Among the most commonly reported traits are sex (n = 65,717), age (n = 63,852), body mass (n = 58,768), flight molt presence (n = 44,941), molt presence (n = 44,847), body molt presence (n = 44,606), tail length (n = 43,005), reproductive stage (n = 42,588), bill length (n = 37,409), body length (n = 28,394), right wing length (n = 21,950), tarsus length (n = 20,342), and wing length (n = 18,071). The most frequently recorded species are Chiroxiphia caudata (n = 1,837), Turdus albicollis (n = 1,658), Trichothraupis melanops (n = 1,468), Turdus leucomelas (n = 1,436), and Basileuterus culicivorus (n = 1,384). The species recorded in the greatest number of sampling localities are Basileuterus culicivorus (n = 243), Trichothraupis melanops (n = 242), Chiroxiphia caudata (n = 210), Platyrinchus mystaceus (n = 208), and Turdus rufiventris (n = 191). ATLANTIC BIRD TRAITS (ABT) is the most comprehensive data set on measurements of bird morphological traits found in a biodiversity hotspot; it provides data for basic and applied research at multiple scales, from individual to community, and from the local to the macroecological perspectives. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set. Please cite this data paper when the data are used in publications or teaching and educational activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous-based predictors of habitat characteristics derived from satellite imagery are increasingly used in species distribution models (SDM). This is especially the case of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which provides estimates of vegetation productivity and heterogeneity. However, when NDVI predictors are incorporated into SDM, synchrony between biological observations and image acquisition must be questionned. Due to seasonal variations of NDVI during the year, landscape patterns of habitats are revealed differently from one date to another leading to variations in models' performance. In this paper, we investigated the influence of acquisition time period of NDVI to explain and predict bird community patterns over France. We examined if the NDVI acquisition period that best fit the bird data depends on the dominant land cover context. We also compared models based on single time period of NDVI with one model built from the Dynamic Habitat Index (DHI) components which summarize variations in vegetation phenology throughout the year from the fraction of radiation absorbed by the canopy (fPAR). Bird species richness was calculated as response variable for 759 plots of 4 km 2 from the French Breeding Bird Survey. Bird specialists and generalists to habitat were considered. NDVI and DHI predictors were both derived from MODIS products. For NDVI, five time periods in 2010 were compared, from late winter to begin of autumn. A climate predictor was also used and Generalized Additive Models were fitted to explain and predict bird species richness. Results showed that NDVI-based proxies of dominant habitat identity and spatial heterogeneity explain more bird community patterns than DHI-based proxies of annual productivity and seasonnality. We also found that models' performance was both time and context-dependent, varying according to the bird groups. In general, best time period of NDVI did not match with the acquisition period of bird data because in case of synchrony, differences in habitats are less pronounced. These findings suggest that the most powerful approach to estimate bird community patterns is the simplest one. It only requires NDVI predictors from a single appropriate time period, in addition to climate, which makes the approach very operational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]