No abstract

American black duck (Anas rubripes) populations declined by more than 50% between the 1950s and 1990s, and the species serves as a flagship for conserving salt marsh habitats along the Atlantic Coast. Black ducks have generally been well studied throughout the annual cycle, but surprisingly, we lack a synthetic, quantitative understanding of their space use during the winter. This limits our ability to prioritize habitat acquisition and restoration efforts. We used >17,000 telemetry locations from 235 black ducks ranging from Connecticut to Virginia to study home range composition and space use during winter in relation to habitat quality, urbanization, and severe weather. Despite substantial environmental variation, home range sizes were similar among regions and years. Smaller home and core ranges contained a greater proportion of salt marsh habitat, and ducks experiencing more 4-day freeze events had larger home and core ranges. Ducks exposed to prolonged periods of cold weather had smaller core ranges when those areas comprised more energy-rich freshwater habitats. When we examined individual telemetry locations, we found that ducks used irregularly inundated high marsh more at night, presumably for foraging, and urban habitats more during the day and evening crepuscular periods. We found that black ducks used regularly inundated low marsh less on days where the temperature never rose above freezing, and instead used subtidal areas and forested wetlands more. Finally, we found ducks were marginally more likely to use freshwater habitats during high tides. Our study confirms that

Like many resources in the Chesapeake Bay region of the U.S., many waterbird nesting populations have suffered over the past three to four decades. In this study, historic information for the entire Bay and recent results from the Tangier Sound region were evaluated to illustrate patterns of island erosion and habitat loss for 19 breeding species of waterbirds. Aerial imagery and field data collected in the nesting season were the primary sources of data. From a group of 15 islands in Tangier Sound, Virginia were reduced by 21% in area, as most of their small dunes and associated vegetation and forest cover were lost to increased washovers. Concurrently, nesting American black ducks (Anas rubripes) declined by 66% , wading birds (herons-egrets) by 51%, gulls by 72%, common terns (Sterna hirundo) by 96% and black skimmers (Rynchops niger) by about 70% in this complex. The declines noted at the larger Bay-wide scale suggest that this study area maybe symptomatic of a systemic limitation of nesting habitat for these species. The island losses noted in the Chesapeake have also been noted in other Atlantic U. S. coastal states. Stabilization and/or restoration of at least some of the rapidly eroding islands at key coastal areas are critical to help sustain waterbird communities.

Hybridization is common in bird populations but can be challenging for management, especially if one of the two parent species is of greater conservation concern than the other. King rails (Rallus elegans) and clapper rails (R. crepitans) are two marsh bird species with similar morphologies, behaviors, and overlapping distributions. The two species are found along a salinity gradient with the king rail in freshwater marshes and the clapper in estuarine marshes. However, this separation is not absolute; they are occasionally sympatric, and there are reports of interbreeding. In Virginia, USA, both king and clapper rails are identified by the state as Species of Greater Conservation Need, although clappers are thought to be more abundant and king rails have a higher priority ranking. We used a mitochondrial DNA marker and 13 diagnostic nuclear single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to identify species, classify the degree of introgression, and explore the evolutionary history of introgression in two putative clapper rail focal populations along a salinity gradient in coastal Virginia. Genetic analyses revealed cryptic introgression with site‐specific rates of admixture. We identified a pattern of introgression where clapper rail alleles predominate in brackish marshes. These results suggest clapper rails may be displacing king rails in Virginia coastal waterways, most likely as a result of ecological selection. As introgression can result in various outcomes from outbreeding depression to local adaptation, continued monitoring of these populations would allow further exploration of hybrid fitness and inform conservation management.

ABSTRACT:Macrocysts