Search

Roads impact bat populations through habitat loss and collisions. High quality habitats particularly increase bat mortalities on roads, yet many questions remain concerning how local landscape features may influence bat behaviour and lead to high collision risks (e.g. influence of distance to trees, or of vegetation density). When comparing the potential danger of different road sections, the most popular method today is the use of simple bat detectors to assess the local densities of current populations at road sites. Yet, it is not known to which extent bat behaviour influences collisions (i.e. bats flying at vehicle height or on the side or above, co-occurrence of bats and vehicles). Behaviour is very rarely taken into account in practice, and this might lead to hazardous site selections for mitigation. Our goals were thus (i) to estimate how local landscape characteristics affect each of the conditional events leading to collisions (i.e. bat presence, flight in the zone at collision risk and bat-vehicle co-occurrence), and (ii) to determine which of the conditional events most contributed to collisions risks.In this study, we recorded bat activity and characterised flight behaviour with three variables: position at collision risk, bat-vehicle co-occurrence, and flight path orientation, using acoustic flight path tracking at 66 study sites in the Mediterranean region for two to five full nights. We modelled the effect of the local landscape, i.e. in a radius of 30 m around the road (vegetation height, distance, density and orientation), road features (road width, traffic volume) and the time of year on eleven species or species groups. We built models for each conditional probability of the road collision risk (i.e. species density, presence in the zone at risk, bat-vehicle co-occurrence) and multiplied their estimates to calculate the overall collision risk.Our results show that the local landscape had different effects on bat density and presence in the zone at collision risk. Increasing distance to trees and decreasing tree height were associated with a decrease in bat density at roads. Forests were the local landscapes where bats flew more often in the zone at collision risk. The overall collision risk was higher either in forests or at tree rows perpendicular to the road depending on species. Contrary to common preconceptions, mid-range echolocators seemed to be generally more at risk of collision than short-range or long-range echolocators. In addition, collision risk was greatest in summer or autumn for most species. Finally, bats mainly followed the road axis regardless of the type of landscape.Our results contribute to a better understanding of bat movements in different local environments at the scale where they directly sense their surroundings with echolocation calls. Disentangling bat density from flight behaviour allowed us to better understand the temporal and spatial contributors of roadkills, and to provide guidance for road impact assessment studies.

We are interested in the problem of classifying commuting and foraging behaviour of bats at delimited geographical areas, namely sites, throughout France. To predict the majority behaviour on these sites, we use echolocation call data recorded as part of Vigie-Chiro participatory project. As the temporal distribution of calls is a relevant indicator of behaviour, providing an adequate model of this distribution is a matter of great interest. Given the self-exciting dynamics observed in foraging behaviour, we propose to model bat calls by Hawkes processes. Specifically, we consider that the start time of each call emitted on a site is an event of a Hawkes process. Taking advantage of this modelling, we use a suitable procedure that relies on the empirical risk minimization principle to discriminate between the 2 classes. Then, the performance of the procedure is assessed on synthetic data through comprehensive numerical experiments. The overall methodology is evaluated with a goodness-of-fit test. Finally, we present the obtained results on the real data set. The classification results are convincing and show the relevance of our method, which could contribute to a better understanding of behavioural determinants and open up broad perspectives in spatial ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear transportation infrastructures (LTIs) are established drivers of habitat fragmentation and barrier effects. Yet, they represent an increasing surface of managed seminatural habitats where increased consideration of biodiversity outputs is needed in an era of global biodiversity decline. A combined effort by both scientists and stakeholders is, therefore, needed to evaluate the promises and limits of these alternatives so that they best achieve their conservation potential. Our study explores the effects of forest powerline clearings on biodiversity, as well as the potential benefits of integrated vegetation management (IVM) as alternatives to clear‐cuts. We recorded the acoustic activity at 35 pairs of forest/clearing stations in two forested regions of France in 2021. Our results suggest that powerline clearings represent increased movement opportunities for bats and, most particularly, edge‐foraging species. They also provide suitable habitats for bush‐cricket species, particularly species requiring thermophilic conditions. We detected no direct benefit from IVM on bat communities. However, bush‐cricket communities appeared richer, more acoustically active, and statistically different from adjacent forests in clearings favoring secondary vegetation compared with clear‐cut ones. This collaborative study provides data on understudied taxa in the context of LTIs and sheds light on conservation promises and limits associated with their management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Methods in Ecology & Evolution is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Wind power generation has grown exponentially over the past 20 years to meet international goals of increasing the share of renewables in energy production. Yet, this process has too often been conducted at the cost of airborne biodiversity such as birds and bats. The latter are severely threatened due to deaths by collision at wind turbine. The UNEP/EUROBATS agreement that came into force in 1994 is now ratified by 37 countries; since 2008, it recommends to site wind turbines at least 200 m away from woody edges to decrease bat fatality risks. However, 14 years later we still do not know to what extent this international recommendation has been applied in Europe. We assessed siting distances between woody edges and wind turbines for the largest wind energy producers among the UNEP/EUROBATS parties: the UK, Germany, and France. We show that 61%, 78%, and 56%, respectively, of the installed wind turbines did not comply with UNEP/EUROBATS guidelines, without improvement over time. We identified probable causes of these findings and provided key policy recommendations to achieve compliance to UNEP/EUROBATS guidelines such as better: (i) inclusion in regulatory texts, (ii) notification of the environmental authorities, and (iii) strategic, well‐informed, forward planning of areas suitable for wind turbine development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Methods in Ecology & Evolution is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Roads have a multitude of negative effects on wildlife, including bat casualties. Most bat species rely on life history traits characterised by high adult survival (associated with greater longevity) and low reproduction rates (hence slow population growth rates). Therefore, road kills are expected to negatively affect local abundance and bat population dynamics. Bat overpasses are among the proposed improvements intended to increase bat flight height to reduce collisions, but their effectiveness has rarely been tested. In this study, we performed a before-after analysis to assess the effectiveness of one bat overpass on bat flight height. We used a novel approach, the bat tracking toolbox (BTT), to reconstruct bat flight paths from thermal videos. We obtained 268 bat flight paths and our results showed that the flight height of bats increased significantly after the installation of the bat overpass. Considering that bat overpasses can help in some situations to increase habitat connectivity and reduce the collision risk, this mitigation measure needs to be further investigated in different contexts of road construction and/or road requalification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the state and trend of biodiversity in the face of anthropogenic threats requires large‐scale and long‐time monitoring, for which new recording methods offer interesting possibilities. Reduced costs and a huge increase in storage capacity of acoustic recorders have resulted in an exponential use of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) on a wide range of animal groups in recent years. PAM has led to a rapid growth in the quantity of acoustic data, making manual identification increasingly time‐consuming. Therefore, software detecting sound events, extracting numerous features and automatically identifying species have been developed. However, automated identification generates identification errors, which could influence analyses which look at the ecological response of species. Taking the case of bats for which PAM constitutes an efficient tool, we propose a cautious method to account for errors in acoustic identifications of any taxa without excessive manual checking of recordings.We propose to check a representative sample of the outputs of a software commonly used in acoustic surveys (Tadarida), to model the identification success probability of 10 species and two species groups as a function of the confidence score provided for each automated identification. Using this relationship, we then investigated the effect of setting different false positive tolerances (FPTs), from a 50% to 10% false positive rate, above which data are discarded, by repeating a large‐scale analysis of bat response to environmental variables and checking for consistency in the results.Considering estimates, standard errors and significance of species response to environmental variables, the main changes occurred between the naive (i.e. raw data) and robust analyses (i.e. using FPTs). Responses were highly stable between FPTs.We conclude it was essential to, at least, remove data above 50% FPT to minimize false positives. We recommend systematically checking the consistency of responses for at least two contrasting FPTs (e.g. 50% and 10%), in order to ensure robustness, and only going on to conclusive interpretation when these are consistent. This study provides a huge saving of time for manual checking, which will facilitate the improvement in large‐scale monitoring, and ultimately our understanding of ecological responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of transportation infrastructure has been identified as one of the main pressures on biodiversity. The effects of transport infrastructure are more documented for terrestrial mammals, birds and amphibians than for bats. To assess the impacts of roads on bat activity, we carried out full-night acoustic recordings of bat calls at 306 sampling points at different distances from a major road at three study sites in France. To assess the relationship between bat activity and the distance to the major road, we performed generalized linear mixed model analyses for thirteen different species or groups and additionally explored the non-linear effect with generalized additive mixed models. Our results showed that low-flying species are more affected than high-flying species. Indeed, we found a significant negative effect of major roads on bat activity for the 'clutter-adapted' species, Eptesicus serotinus , Myotis spp., Pipistrellus pipistrellus and Rhinolophus hipposideros. These results demonstrate that the road-effect zone of major roads extends up to five kilometres. Extrapolating those road-effects zones to the major roads in the European Union, we estimated that 35% of the European Union is potentially negatively impacted. Finally, it seems urgent to consider these road effects with the cumulative effects of other roads by improving habitat connectivity and foraging areas in land use policies. Additionally, to implement drastic conservation practices for species of conservation concern in environmental impact assessment studies, efficient mitigation and offset measures implemented should be sized proportionally to the disturbance caused. • Major roads affect activity in five of the thirteen studied taxa. • Low-flying species are more affected than those that fly in the open. • Road impacts may be due to road kills, traffic disturbance and ruptured connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We performed a Before-After Control-Impact analysis (BACI) to assess the efficiency of a bat overpass. • An acoustic flight path reconstruction approach was used to quantify bat crossings. • We detected a significant increase of bat crossings between the two periods at the treatment site. • An overpass correctly placed could efficiently restore bat habitat connectivity. Roads have a multitude of negative effects on wildlife, including their prominent role in habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation particularly affects bats during their nightly movements between roosts and foraging areas. Bat overpasses are among the proposed improvements intended to reduce the fragmentation impact of roads, but they have rarely been tested. In this study, we performed a Before-After Control-Impact analysis (BACI) to assess the efficiency of one bat overpass on the number of bat crossings, by using an acoustic flight path reconstruction (AFPR) approach. We obtained 888 bat crossings of five taxa. Our results showed that the number of bat crossings increased significantly after the installation of the bat overpass. Finally, we demonstrated that an overpass correctly placed with respect to a narrow commuting route (a twenty-meter-wide hedgerow) could efficiently restore bat habitat connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic detectors have become increasingly used by bat workers to investigate bat ecology and assess the impacts of anthropogenic pressures. Within these studies, the metric used, 'bat activity', is based on the number of bat passes, without considering the bat pass duration (i.e. each event of a bat detected within the range of an ultrasonic detector). We expected that bat pass duration may contain information about site quality in terms of foraging potential. Because bats are expected to have a more sinuous trajectory and slower velocity when they exhibit foraging behaviour, as opposed to commuting behaviour, we hypothesize a longer bat pass duration in favourable habitats; during seasons with important energetic demands; or during night peak activity. We used datasets from a large-scale acoustic bat survey (n = 2890 sites), with a total of 24,597 bat pass measures from 6 taxa, and performed GLMM modelling. We detected a significant effect of habitat type on bat pass duration for five taxa. Shorter bat pass durations were detected at the beginning of the night. We detected longer pass durations during the lactation period or just before hibernating, while weather conditions or ageing and wear of the detector rarely influenced bat pass duration. Bat pass duration appears to be a simple and easy measure for position calls on a gradient between commuting vs. foraging behaviour. We suggest that the traditional measure of bat activity may be weighted by bat pass duration by giving more weight to events with potentially stronger links to foraging behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of echolocation allows insectivorous bats to access unique foraging niches by locating obstacles and prey with ultrasounds in complete darkness. To avoid interspecific competition, it is likely that sonar features and wing morphology co-evolved with species vertical distribution, but due to the technical difficulties of studying flight in the vertical dimension, this has never been demonstrated with empirical measurements. The authors equipped 48 wind masts with arrays of two microphones and located the vertical distribution of a community of 19 bat species and two species groups over their annual activity period (>8000 nights). The authors tested the correlation between the proportion of flights at height and the acoustic features of bat calls as well as their wing morphology. The authors found that call peak frequency and bandwidth are good predictors of bat use of the vertical space regardless of their acoustic strategies (i.e., gleaning, hawking, or detecting prey flutter). High wing aspect ratios and high wing loadings were associated with high proportions of time spent at height, confirming hypotheses from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Applied Ecology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Monitoring biodiversity over large spatial and temporal scales is crucial for assessing the impact of global changes and environmental mitigation measures. However, large-scale monitoring of invertebrates remains poorly developed despite the importance of these organisms in ecosystem functioning. Exciting possibilities applicable to professional and citizen science are offered by new recording techniques and methods of semi-automated species recognition based on sound detection., Static broad-spectrum detectors deployed to record throughout whole nights have been recommended for standardised acoustic monitoring of bats, but they have the potential to also collect acoustic data for other species groups. Large-scale deployment of such systems is only viable when combined with robust automated species identification algorithms. Here we examine the potential of such a system for detecting, identifying and monitoring bush-crickets (Orthoptera of the family Tettigoniidae). We use incidental sound recordings generated by an extensive citizen science bat survey and recordings from intensive site surveys to test a semi-automated step-wise method with a classifier for assigning species identities. We assess species' diel activity patterns to make recommendations for survey timing and interpretation of existing nocturnal data sets and consider the feasibility of determining site occupancy., Of six species of bush-crickets, the species classifier achieved over 85% accuracy for three, speckled bush-cricket, dark bush-cricket and Roesel's bush-cricket. It should be possible to automatically scan recordings for these species with minimal manual validation. Further refinement of the classifier is required for the three remaining species, in particular for the acoustically similar short-winged conehead and long-winged conehead. Diel activity patterns are species specific and it may be necessary to adjust the hours over which the detectors record to increase detection of key species, but this must be weighed against the costs in terms of increased memory and battery use and equipment security during daytime., We conclude that with logistical support and centralised semi-automated species identification it is now possible for the public to contribute to large-scale acoustic monitoring of Orthoptera while recording bats. Further innovation of sound classifier algorithms is needed and would be aided by improved reference sound libraries from multiple locations spanning species' ranges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pied butterfly bat, Glauconycteris superba, is endemic to the tropical forest zone of Africa, where it was previously known from only five specimens. Here we report the capture of 10 individuals in two localities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Mbiye Island and Yoko forest reserve), and we present the first acoustic data of the species recorded using a conventional microphone and a home-made acoustic system for real time 3D localization. Our morphological comparisons show that females are larger and heavier than males, and that the two sexes exhibit the same fur coloration pattern. We found some individual variations concerning the width of the two lateral white stripes on the belly, and the number and extension of white shoulder-spots. The echolocation recordings show evidence for alternation between two call types (A and B), differing in frequency, bandwidth, and duration. The acoustic signals obtained before captures and after releases revealed important variations depending on the trajectories and environmental conditions. Acoustic characteristics, wing measurements, and the unique black and white fur pattern of G. superba suggest that it is a canopy species able to fly at high speeds. Our findings will be useful for future ecological studies to provide new data on the range, population size, trend and threats of G. superba in order to better assess its conservation status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here are proposed two automatic detectors of Barau's petrel ( Pterodroma baraui ) and tropical shearwater ( Puffinus bailloni ) vocalisations in noisy audio recordings (1) trained with a low number of positive training instances, and (2) whose performances would be the highest possible. To do so, acoustic recordings were performed in one Barau's petrel colony between February and May 2014 (85 h) and in two tropical shearwater colonies in March and April (21 h). Manual and automatic methods of segmentation were combined. Manual segmentation allowed (1) to miss a very few number of positive segments and (2) to avoid introducing false positive instances. Automatic segmentation provided quickly a diversified set of negative instances. Manual labelling must be regarded as an investment, for current and future works. A random forest classifier and classical methods of acoustic signal characterisation (cepstral coefficients, spectral moments, etc.) were tested. Best models were able to discriminate each target species calls from other sounds of its colony with F1 scores of 88% (Barau's petrel, 1015 samples) and 85% (tropical shearwater, 1217 samples). The acoustic monitoring of nocturnal burrow-nesting seabirds based on (1) data collected by autonomous recording units in harsh, windy and wet environments and (2) automatic analysis tools is feasible. The size of our database was limited. Consequently further works will be necessary to study robustness of models on long time-series data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As light pollution is currently considered to be a major threat to biodiversity, different lighting management options are being explored to mitigate the impact of artificial lighting on wildlife. Although part-night lighting schemes have been adopted by many local authorities across Europe to reduce the carbon footprint and save energy, their effects on biodiversity are unknown. Through a paired, in situ experiment, we compared the activity levels of 8 bat species under unlit, part-night, and full-night lighting treatments in a rural area located 60 km south of Paris, France. We selected 36 study locations composed of 1 lit site and a paired unlit control site; 24 of these sites were located in areas subject to part-night lighting schemes, and 12 sites were in areas under standard, full-night lighting. There was significantly more activity on part-night lighting sites compared to full-night lighting sites for the late-emerging, light-sensitive Plecotus spp., and a similar pattern was observable for Myotis spp., although not significant. In contrast, part-night lighting did not influence the activity of early emerging bat species around streetlights, except for Pipistrellus pipistrellus for which there was significantly less activity on part-night lighting sites than on full-night lighting sites. Overall, no significant difference in activity between part- and full-night lighting sites were observed in 5 of the 8 species studied, suggesting that current part-night lighting schemes fail to encompass the range of activity of most bat species. We recommend that such schemes start earlier at night to effectively mitigate the adverse effects of artificial lighting on light-sensitive species, particularly along ecological corridors that are especially important to the persistence of biodiversity in urban landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few reports have been published on detection distances of bat calls because the evaluation of detection distance is complicated. Several of the approaches used to measure detection distances are based on the researcher's experience and judgment. More recently, multiple microphones have been used to model flight path. In this study, the validity of a low-cost and simple detectability metric was tested. We hypothesize that the duration of an echolocating-bat-pass within the area of an ultrasonic bat detector is correlated with the distance of detection. Two independent datasets from a large-scale acoustic bat survey—a total of 25,786 bat-passes from 20 taxa (18 species and two genera)—were measured. We found a strong relationship between these measures of bat-pass duration and published detection distances. The advantages of bat-pass duration measures are that, for each study, experimenters easily produce their own proxy for the distance of detection. This indirect measure of the distance of detection could be mobilized to monitor the loss in microphone sensitivity used to monitor long-term population trends. Finally, the possibility of producing an index for distance of detection provides a weight for each bat species' activity when they are aggregated to produce a bat community metric, such as the widely used "total activity". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Wind energy is rapidly growing as a renewable source of energy but is not neutral for wildlife, especially bats. Whereas most studies have focused on bat mortality through collision, very few have quantified the loss of habitat use resulting from the potential negative impact of wind turbines, and none of them for hub heights higher than 55 m. Such impacts could durably affect populations, creating a need for improvement of knowledge to integrate this concern in implementation strategies. We quantified the impact of wind turbines at different distances on the activity of 11 bat taxa and 2 guilds. We compared bat activity at hedgerows (207 sites) located at a distance of 0–1000 m from wind turbines (n = 151) of 29 wind farms in an agricultural region in the autumn (overall 193,980 bat passes) using GLMMs. We found a significant negative effect of proximity to turbines on activity for 3 species (Barbastella barbastellus , Nyctalus leisleiri , Pipistrellus pipistrellus), 2 species-groups (Myotis spp., Plecotus spp.) and 2 guilds (fast-flying and gleaner). Bat activity within 1000 m of wind turbines by gleaners and fast-flying bats is reduced by 53.8% and 19.6%, respectively. Our study highlighted that European recommendations (at least 200 m from any wooded edge) to limit mortality events likely strongly underestimate the loss of bat activity. The current situation is particularly worrying, with 89% of 909 turbines established in a region that does not comply with recommendations, which themselves are far from sufficient to limit the loss of habitat use. Highlights • High negative effect on bat activity of proximity to wind turbines for some species • Some of these species were so far unknown to be impacted by wind turbines. • Activity of gleaners and fast-flying bats close to turbines is reduced by 53.8% and 19.6%. • The impact occurs over 1000 m around wind turbines. • European recommendations are unapplied and far from sufficient for this impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although diel activity time is a major axis of species' niche space, very few conservation measures focus on preserving daily periods free of anthropogenic pressures. While the spatial ecology of bats has received much attention, less is known about their temporal ecology, the knowledge being dispersed in studies of limited taxonomical, spatial and temporal range. We used data from the French bat monitoring program based on citizen science and standardised acoustic recordings (4409 sites monitored and 9807 nights monitored from 2014 to 2020) to characterise the diel activity patterns of 20 bat species so that their consideration in mitigation measures can help conservation. We designed a method to extract times of key descriptors and describe bat activity distribution throughout the night. We found that bat species could be separated in three functional groups characterised by a crepuscular activity, an activity that occurs when it is completely dark or an intermediate activity. We showed variations of diel activity patterns depending on season. We argue that accounting for these complex diel activity patterns would help design efficient mitigation measures, for instance to reduce the exposure of bats to light pollution or wind turbines. Overall, we advocate multi-taxa approaches to design conservation policies adapted to both the temporal and spatial distributions of species. [Display omitted] • Conservation should include species temporal distribution besides their spatial one. • Citizen science programs enable the study of bat diel activity patterns at wide scales. • Similarities in diel activity patterns of bats enable functional groups to be defined. • Seasons can interact with the time of night to determine diel activity patterns. • Diel activity patterns should be considered when designing efficient mitigation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In order to face the large and worrying biodiversity decline in agricultural landscapes, important policy instruments like agri-environmental schemes (AES) have been implemented. Studies that have examined the ecological effects of AES are now numerous and generally use indicators of biodiversity such as species richness and diversity as well as species abundance. Yet, it has been shown that simple metrics such as species richness or abundance may give misleading messages about biodiversity status and fate. Moreover, those indicators cannot detect another important source of biodiversity loss, biotic homogenisation. In this context, taking into account to a wider extent ecological difference among species would be more relevant, as well as focusing on the species specialisation which is known to be linked to higher species vulnerability. A bibliographic review investigating the criteria generally used to assess the success of AES showed that 55% of studies used species richness and/or abundance exclusively without any consideration of specialisation or other ecological traits in their evaluation of AES effectiveness. Based on data from the French breeding bird survey and studies at regional scale in France on farmland birds, we show that: (i) species richness and specialisation are generally negatively correlated in agricultural areas, (ii) habitat heterogeneity does not benefit specialist species, and (iii) monitoring of species diversity should be coupled with the monitoring of specialist species to improve conservation strategies in farming systems. Overall, this study emphasizes the need to account for both community richness and composition when assessing AES or similar conservation planning. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Increases in farming practice intensity and landscape simplification are two well-known threats for many farmland bird species. Nevertheless, the effects of these two factors may differ strongly among species. Here, we propose to use the specialist–generalist concept to assess which bird species are most affected by these two factors. Bird density and intensity of farming practices were assessed within a sample of 58 farms across the Seine-et-Marne region in France, using point counts and a standardised farmer survey. The local abundance of 41 farmland and non-farmland species was related to farming intensity (pesticide applications) and landscape simplification (proportion of arable land), which was quantified using generalised least square models to account for spatial autocorrelation. The more specialised the farmland and non-farmland birds were, the more negatively affected they were by the intensity of farming practices, relative to the generalist bird species. Local habitat simplification had a more positive effect on abundance of the most specialist farmland bird species. This latter relationship was not significant when tested at a landscape scale, which strongly suggests that the sensitivity of farmland specialists to landscape simplification is scale-dependent. Some non-farmland species’ abundance was also reduced by farming intensity and local landscape simplification suggesting that low-input agri-environmental measures could benefit both farmland and non-farmland specialists, regardless of local and landscape habitat context. However, if diversity-enhancing measures should benefit non-farmland populations, it is likely that they do not favour farmland specialist species which are more at risk. We suggest designing of priority areas for farmland specialist birds, and landscape managing accordingly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent advances in birdsong detection and classification have approached a limit due to the lack of fully annotated recordings. In this paper, we present NIPS4Bplus, the first richly annotated birdsong audio dataset, that is comprised of recordings containing bird vocalisations along with their active species tags plus the temporal annotations acquired for them. Statistical information about the recordings, their species specific tags and their temporal annotations are presented along with example uses. NIPS4Bplus could be used in various ecoacoustic tasks, such as training models for bird population monitoring, species classification, birdsong vocalisation detection and classification., Competing Interests: Dan Stowell is an Academic Editor for PeerJ., (©2019 Morfi et al.)