Introduction: When birds fly in cluttered environments, they must tailor their flight to the gaps that they traverse. We trained budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, to fly through a vertically oriented gap of variable width, to investigate their ability to perform evasive manoeuvres during passage.

It is essential for birds to be agile and aware of their immediate environment, especially when flying through dense foliage. To investigate the type of visual signals and strategies used by birds while negotiating cluttered environments, we presented budgerigars with vertically oriented apertures of different widths. We find that, when flying through narrow apertures, birds execute their maneuvers in an anticipatory fashion, with wing closures, if necessary, occurring well in advance of the aperture. When passing through an aperture that is narrower than the wingspan, the birds close their wings at a specific, constant distance before the aperture, which is independent of aperture width. In these cases, the birds also fly significantly higher, possibly pre-compensating for the drop in altitude. The speed of approach is largely constant, and independent of the width of the aperture. The constancy of the approach speed suggests a simple means by which optic flow can be used to gauge the distance and width of the aperture, and guide wing closure.

Parthenogenesis often evolves in association with hybridization, but the associated ecological consequences are poorly understood. The Australian gecko Heteronotia binoei is unusual because triploid parthenogenesis evolved through reciprocal crosses between two sexual lineages, resulting in four possible cytonuclear genotypes. In this species complex, we compared the performance of these parthenogenetic genotypes with their sexual progenitors for a suite of physiological traits (metabolic rate, thermal tolerance, locomotor performance, and in vitro activity and gene sequence divergence of a cytonuclear metabolic pathway, cytochrome C oxidase). Mass‐specific metabolic rate scaled differently with body mass for parthenogens and sexuals, while heat tolerance provided the only evidence for cytonuclear incompatibility in hybrid parthenogens. The most prominent phenotypic effects were attributable to nuclear genome dosage. Overall, our results suggest that the hybrid/polyploidy origin of parthenogenetic H. binoei has had surprisingly few negative fitness consequences and may have produced a broader overall niche for the species.

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We report the development of a prototype tool for modeling the risks of spreading of non-indigenous invasive species via ballast water. The tool constitutes of two types of models: a 3D hydrodynamical model calculates the currents in the North Sea and Danish Straits, and an agent-based model estimates the dispersal of selected model organisms with the prevailing currents calculated by the 3D hydrodynamical model. The analysis is concluded by a postprocessing activity, where scenarios of dispersal are combined into an interim estimate of connectivity within the study area. The latter can be used for assessment of potential risk associated with intentional or unintentional discharges of ballast water. We discuss how this prototype tool can be used for ballast water risk management and outline other functions and uses, e.g., in regard to ecosystem-based management and the implementation of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive.Keywords Invasive species . non-indigenous species . ballast water . agent-based modelling . individual-based modelling . ecological connectivity . risk assessment . water framework directive . WFD . MIKE 3 . ECO Lab . ABM Lab WMU