Abstract. Migratory bird needs must be met during four phases of the year: breeding season, fall migration, wintering, and spring migration; thus, management may be needed during all four phases. The bulk of research and management has focused on the breeding season, although several issues remain unsettled, including the spatial extent of habitat influences on fitness and the importance of habitat on the breeding grounds used after breeding. Although detailed investigations have shed light on the ecology and population dynamics of a few avian species, knowledge is sketchy for most species. Replication of comprehensive studies is needed for multiple species across a range of areas.Information deficiencies are even greater during the wintering season, when birds require sites that provide security and food resources needed for survival and developing nutrient reserves for spring migration and, possibly, reproduction. Research is needed on many species simply to identify geographic distributions, wintering sites, habitat use, and basic ecology. Studies are complicated, however, by the mobility of birds and by sexual segregation during winter. Stable-isotope methodology has offered an opportunity to identify linkages between breeding and wintering sites, which facilitates understanding the complete annual cycle of birds.The twice-annual migrations are the poorest-understood events in a bird's life. Migration has always been a risky undertaking, with such anthropogenic features as tall buildings, towers, and wind generators adding to the risk. Species such as woodland specialists migrating through eastern North America have numerous options for pausing during migration to replenish nutrients, but some species depend on limited stopover locations. Research needs for migration include identifying pathways and timetables of migration, quality and distribution of habitats, threats posed by towers and other tall structures, and any bottlenecks for migration. Issues such as human population growth, acid deposition, climate change, and exotic diseases are global concerns with uncertain consequences to migratory birds and even lesscertain remedies. Despite enormous gaps in our understanding of these birds, research, much of it occurring in the past 30 years, has provided sufficient information to make intelligent conservation efforts but needs to expand to handle future challenges.

Abstract. Our understanding of migratory birds' year-round ecology and evolution remains patchy despite recent fundamental advances. Periodic reviews focus future research and inform conservation and management; here, we take advantage of our combined experiences working on Western Hemisphere avian migration systems to highlight recent lessons and critical gaps in knowledge. Among topics discussed are: (1) The pipeline from pure to applied researchers leaves room for improvement. (2) Population limitation and regulation includes both seasonal and between-season interactions. (3) The study of movements of small-bodied species remains a major research frontier. (4) We must increase our understanding of population connectivity. (5) With few exceptions, population regulation has barely been investigated. (6) We have increasingly integrated landscape configuration of habitats, large-scale habitat disturbances, and habitat quality impacts into models of seasonal and overall demographic success. (7) The post-breeding season (late summer for latitudinal migrants) is increasingly appreciated for its impacts on demography. (8) We recognize the diverse ways that avian brood parasites, nest predators, and food availability affect demography. (9) Source-sink and meta-population models help us understand migratory avian distributions among fragmented habitats. (10) Advances in modeling have improved estimates of annual survival and fecundity, but for few species. (11) Populations can be limited by ecological conditions in winter, but habitat needs are poorly known for most species at this time. (12) Migration tends to occupy broad spatial fronts that may change seasonally or when migrants cross major barriers. En route conditions can limit migrant populations; linking migration habitat quality indicators to fitness or population consequences presents a major challenge. (14) A variety of intra-tropical Neotropical migration patterns are recognizable, but almost nothing is known about these systems beyond descriptions of a few typical species' movements. (15) Global climate change scenarios predict range and phenology shifts of Neotropical migrant bird populations that must be considered in conservation plans. Future studies will depend on new technologies and the integration of modeling with sophisticated, large-spatial-scale measurement and parameter estimation; whether the pace of research and management involving migratory birds can match the growth of environmental threats remains to be seen.

Aim Understanding patterns of species turnover along environmental gradients and their consistency across taxonomic groups is central to the study of biodiversity. We may expect congruence in diversity patterns across groups whose ranges could be influenced by species interactions. We explore associations between bird and vegetation communities in the tropical Andes to determine whether patterns of species richness and turnover in birds and trees are congruent with elevation, and whether tree species composition, vegetation structure, elevation, or a combination of these best predicts bird species composition. Location A forested 2600‐m elevational gradient on the eastern slope of the Peruvian Andes. Methods Bird surveys and vegetation measurements were conducted at 172 points, and a subset of these were spatially matched with fourteen 1‐ha tree inventory plots. Diversity patterns were described for trees, birds, and avian foraging guilds. We used dissimilarity matrices to examine patterns of turnover and nestedness. Turnover of birds and trees was examined by comparing compositional change of adjacent plots along the gradient. Multiple regression on distance matrices was employed to determine contributions of tree species composition, vegetation structure and elevation to explaining variation in bird species composition. Results Species richness was higher for trees than for birds, and whereas diversity in both taxa decreased with elevation, tree richness showed a low‐elevation plateau before declining at higher elevations. Tree species had narrower distributions compared to birds, but patterns of turnover were largely congruent between taxa. Nestedness contributed much less to dissimilarity than turnover, although birds showed higher nestedness, particularly at high elevations. Tree species composition, elevation and vegetation structure were all important predictors of bird species composition; the best model explained 78% of bird dissimilarity across plots. Tree species composition was always included in the best models, for all birds and foraging guilds. Main conclusions Our assessment of Andean bird and vegetation communities suggests strong correspondence, perhaps due to direct interactions or similar underlying drivers. We hypothesize that with climate change, range shifts in these groups may not occur independently. Rather, birds may have delayed upslope shifts or may be limited to high‐elevation patches where appropriate vegetation communities exist.

2016-12-24T18:13:07

Seasonal phenotypic flexibility in small birds produces a winter phenotype with elevated maximum cold-induced metabolic rates (=summit metabolism, Ṁ sum ). Temperature and photoperiod are candidates for drivers of seasonal phenotypes, but their relative impacts on metabolic variation are unknown. We examined photoperiod and temperature effects on Ṁ sum , muscle masses and activities of key catabolic enzymes in winter dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis). We randomly assigned birds to four treatment groups varying in temperature (cold=3°C; warm=24°C) and photoperiod [short day (SD)=8 h:16 h light:dark; long day (LD)=16 h:8 h light:dark] in a two-by-two design. We measured body mass (M b ), flight muscle width and Ṁ sum before and after 3 and 6 weeks of acclimation, and flight muscle and heart masses after 6 weeks. Ṁ sum increased for cold-exposed, but not for warm-exposed, birds. LD birds gained more M b than SD birds, irrespective of temperature. Flight muscle size and mass did not differ significantly among groups, but heart mass was larger in cold-exposed birds. Citrate synthase, carnitine palmitoyl transferase and β-hydroxyacyl Co-A dehydrogenase activities in the pectoralis were generally higher for LD and cold groups. The coldinduced changes in Ṁ sum and heart mass parallel winter changes for small birds, but the larger M b and higher catabolic enzyme activities in LD birds suggest photoperiod-induced changes associated with migratory disposition. Temperature appears to be a primary driver of flexibility in Ṁ sum in juncos, but photoperiod-induced changes in M b and catabolic enzyme activities, likely associated with migratory disposition, interact with temperature to contribute to seasonal phenotypes.

Flow regulation has significantly altered hydrological, geomorphic, and ecological processes on the Missouri River. Cumulative effects are evident in declines in cottonwood (Populus deltoides) recruitment and in altered forest age structure and composition. Record runoff in 2011 exceeded reservoir capacity on the Upper and Middle Missouri, leading to a 500-year recurrence interval flood in terms of volume, with the highest peak discharge in 59 years and flood durations of up to 3 months. We assessed the effects of this 'large infrequent disturbance' by comparing pre-flood (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009) to post-flood (2012) changes in riparian forests along two unchannelized segments of the Missouri River. Live shrub and tree density declined sharply within young forest stands (<30 years). Higher proportions of non-native (Elaeagnus angustifolia) and upland (Juniperus virginiana) trees showed evidence of recent mortality than did the native cottonwood. Sandbar area increased sharply from 2006 to 2012 and area of young forests declined, with particularly sharp declines in sapling stands that had established following the previous post-dam record flow releases in 1997. Cottonwood recruitment was widespread in 2012, but nearly all seedling patches occurred on sandbars in the active channel rather than on overbank sites, with moderately high (61-77%) seedling mortality over 2012-2013. Physical and operational constraints within the regulated Missouri River limited the restorative effects of the 2011 flood and will likely limit future forest recovery. Process-based riparian restoration would require restoring flow and sediment regimes that more closely mimic historical conditions, as well as overcoming the physical legacies of decades of flow regulation.

BackgroundEarly indication of an emerging malaria epidemic can provide an opportunity for proactive interventions. Challenges to the identification of nascent malaria epidemics include obtaining recent epidemiological surveillance data, spatially and temporally harmonizing this information with timely data on environmental precursors, applying models for early detection and early warning, and communicating results to public health officials. Automated web-based informatics systems can provide a solution to these problems, but their implementation in real-world settings has been limited.MethodsThe Epidemic Prognosis Incorporating Disease and Environmental Monitoring for Integrated Assessment (EPIDEMIA) computer system was designed and implemented to integrate disease surveillance with environmental monitoring in support of operational malaria forecasting in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. A co-design workshop was held with computer scientists, epidemiological modelers, and public health partners to develop an initial list of system requirements. Subsequent updates to the system were based on feedback obtained from system evaluation workshops and assessments conducted by a steering committee of users in the public health sector.ResultsThe system integrated epidemiological data uploaded weekly by the Amhara Regional Health Bureau with remotely-sensed environmental data freely available from online archives. Environmental data were acquired and processed automatically by the EASTWeb software program. Additional software was developed to implement a public health interface for data upload and download, harmonize the epidemiological and environmental data into a unified database, automatically update time series forecasting models, and generate formatted reports. Reporting features included district-level control charts and maps summarizing epidemiological indicators of emerging malaria outbreaks, environmental risk factors, and forecasts of future malaria risk.ConclusionsSuccessful implementation and use of EPIDEMIA is an important step forward in the use of epidemiological and environmental informatics systems for malaria surveillance. Developing software to automate the workflow steps while remaining robust to continual changes in the input data streams was a key technical challenge. Continual stakeholder involvement throughout design, implementation, and operation has created a strong enabling environment that will facilitate the ongoing development, application, and testing of the system.

With the loss of over 70% of North America's grasslands (Samson et al. 2004), grassland birds increasingly rely on habitat that is privately owned and managed for livestock production. Therefore, it is critical to understand how livestock grazing influences grassland bird abundance and community structure. We evaluated the response of 4 obligate grassland bird species to grazing intensity, vegetation structure, ecological site description, and burning across a landscape including pastures with no recent grazing to pastures experiencing grazing intensities similar to that for private livestock production operations. We evaluated models using a binomial N-mixture model implemented in the R package unmarked. Overall, 3 of the 4 obligate species included positive relationships with grazing intensity in the top abundance model (i.e., grasshopper sparrow [Ammodramus savannarum], bobolink [Dolichonyx oryzivorus], and upland sandpiper [Bartramia longicauda]), suggesting the range of grazing intensities evaluated (0-4.57 animal months/ha) did not negatively affect the abundance of these species. Marbled godwit (Limosa fedoa) abundance, however, was higher with greater variability in litter depth but was not directly related to grazing intensity. Finally, the effect of year was correlated with decreasing precipitation over the course of the study and had the greatest influence on community composition with some community separation by grazing intensity. Our results suggest that cattle grazing can positively influence the abundance of some grassland bird species but annual variation in weather patterns can influence community composition at sites regardless of management decisions. Ó 2016 The Wildlife Society.