For many migratory species, social interactions on migration are poorly known, particularly the extent to which brood siblings remain together, at least during their first post-fledging migration. This study tested the assumption that Black Stork siblings stay together during migration and is the first time that juveniles from the same brood of a Palearctic sub-Saharan migratory stork species have been tracked on migration. Four juveniles from the same brood were followed by satellite tracking, and each dispersed or migrated in a completely different direction to its siblings. The results thus refute the idea that Black Stork siblings remain together on their first migration, but to confirm these new findings, it is important to repeat the study using additional nests.
The Black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius, L. 1758) is the largest primary cavity digger in western Europe. Its cavities represent an essential microhabitat for many other forest species but the landscape factors that influence the cavity digging by the Black woodpecker are poorly known and rarely been quantified at the scale of the vital range. We used cavity maps by foresters and naturalists to build a large (2689 cavity bearing trees) database distributed over 11 sites in France. Based on this and on a set of pseudo-absence data, we analysed the effects of stand composition and landscape features at three different scales around each plot corresponding to a forest management unit (10ha), the core (100ha) and extended (250ha) vital range scales. We showed that landscape shape index and forest composition (mixed forests) had significant effects but that the magnitude varied across the three scales. The Black woodpecker tend to avoid conifer-dominated stands to dig cavities, and also prefer homogeneous forest landscapes with low edge densities. These results vary with precipitation and slope with stronger effects of landscape in wetter climates and higher slopes. Although forest management rarely modifies the landscape in western Europe, a better understanding of the features that influence cavity digging by the Black woodpecker may help to better integrate their conservation at the management planning scale. Our results also show the importance to maintain mixed broadleaf-conifer forests as well as connected forest landscapes to favour features that benefit forest biodiversity at the large scale.
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