Autonomous recording units have been widely used in a large number of bird studies in recent years, but challenges remain in estimating abundance based on acoustic monitoring. We tested whether vocal activity rate index (VAR; the number of songs per unit time for a species), recorded using autonomous recording units, was related to population abundance in two terrestrial bird species, the European Bee‐eater Merops apiaster and the Dupont's Lark Chersophilus duponti. We took recordings at sites where censuses were also carried out to estimate local populations around recorders. We found a positive and significant relationship for the two monitored species. Although our results are not conclusive, the strong and significant relationship found for both monitored species suggests that VAR may be used to infer bird abundance around recorders in terrestrial species. We describe five logical steps for using the VAR with autonomous recording units in other species to guide future studies.

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Monitoring temporal dynamics in genetic diversity is of great importance for conservation, especially for threatened species that are suffering a rapid population decline and increased fragmentation. Here, we investigate temporal variation in genetic diversity, structure, and gene flow in the Dupont’s lark (Chersophilus duponti) across most of its range. This species shows increasing levels of population fragmentation, substantial population declines, and severe range contraction, so temporal losses of genetic diversity, increasing differentiation, and decreasing gene flow are expected when comparing present day data with previous situations. To address this, we resampled sites (nine regions in two countries) after 12–15 years (five-to-seven generations) and assessed changes in genetic parameters using 11 microsatellite markers. We found no substantial loss in genetic diversity over time at the species level, but we detected considerable variation among regions in the amount of allelic diversity and heterozygosity lost over time. Temporal variation in allele frequencies (common, rare, and private alleles), and changes in genetic differentiation and gene flow over time suggest a major role of connectivity for the stability of the overall metapopulation. Our results agree with the hypothesis that connectivity rescues genetic diversity via immigration and gene flow. However, evidence of recent genetic bottleneck and the substantial changes detected in some regions are clear signs of genetic erosion and may be signalling a rapid decline of the populations. Urgent actions must be carried out to stop and reverse human impacts on this threatened lark and its habitat.

Wind farm implementation is a rapidly growing source of landscape transformation that may alter ecological processes such as predator-prey interactions. We tested the hypothesis that wind farms increase the activity of nest predators and, ultimately, increment ground-nest predation rates. We placed 18 plots in Iberian shrub-steppes (11 at control and seven at wind farm sites), each one comprised nine artificial ground-nests (three quail eggs/nest). Artificial nests were placed during two events: at the beginning (April) and at the end (June) of the breeding season in 2016 (n = 324 artificial nests). We estimated the relative abundance of avian and large mammalian predators in the surroundings of each plot and recorded nest fate after 12 days exposure. We also measured variables at landscape and microhabitat scale that potentially affect This is a previous version of the article published in