The East Asian–Australian Flyway spans from north Asia to Australia and is the world's richest birds' flyway because it involves > 40% of global migratory bird species. However, information is lacking on individual migratory routes and non‐breeding grounds for small land birds using this flyway. Here, we present the first migration tracks of the songbird Stejneger's stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri from this part of the world using light‐level geolocators. This species depends on grasslands during the entire annual cycle and was captured and equipped with tracking devices in Hokkaido, northern Japan. All individuals traveled through southern Primorye or eastern Heilongjiang (Russia/China) before flying southward via central China toward their major non‐breeding grounds in southeast Asia (China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam). Individual stonechats spent 42–70 d en route during their autumn migration. Both the major non‐breeding grounds and the stopover sites are likely to pose challenges to the persistence of this species, because these habitats are currently degraded and will likely be lost in the near future due to intensified agriculture and the establishment of permanent croplands. Moreover, the areas used by Stejneger's stonechat during migration largely overlapped with illegal trapping areas in northeastern China.

Conservation of temperate forest biodiversity has historically focused on natural oldgrowth. Less than 3% of the world's temperate forests remain unmodified by humans, however, and much of temperate-forest biodiversity is held in the predominating planted and secondary forests. Japan provides a widely applicable model for examining how to maximize biodiversity in managed temperate forests, because of its richness of forestry research generated from its vast forest area, albeit largely in Japanese, and the wide practice of its dominant management interventions across the northern temperate zone. Management for plantations includes thinning, extended rotation cycles and clear-cutting. For secondary forests regenerating from past clearance, traditional management varies in its intensities, from clear-cutting as coppices to small-scale understory clearance. Here we provide a first synthesis of published research on biodiversity in planted and secondary forests of Japan, relevant to management of these types of forest in northern temperate regions. Systematic review and meta-analyses of papers published in English and Japanese quantified management impacts on species richness and abundance of several taxa, in relation to moderator variables including stand age and management intensity. Plantation thinning substantially increases the richness and abundance of several taxa. Effect sizes decline with time since thinning for the abundance of regenerating saplings and seedlings, necessitating repeated thinning treatments every 6 years to sustain this positive effect. Taxonomic groups exhibit variable relationships with stand age in both planted and secondary forests, indicating a need to include both young and old forest stands in managed forest mosaics. We find an insufficient evidence base is available to allow for a meaningful synthesis of low-intensity management effects in historically managed secondary forests, with studies varying widely in scale and reported outcomes. We outline an agenda for the research community to achieve a systematic evaluation of scale-dependent effects of traditional forest management on biodiversity.

Expansion and intensification of agriculture have led to an immense decrease in biodiversity. However, the area of abandoned farmland has been increasing globally in recent years and is expected to provide novel habitats for various organisms. Despite the promising potential for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes, few studies have compared biodiversity among multiple land use types, including abandoned farmland. We examined the effects of major land use types (wetland, grassland, forest, farmland, abandoned farmland) and the surrounding landscape openness (proportion of wetland/grassland in the surrounding area) on the abundance and species richness of bird communities and four functional groups (wetland, grassland, farmland, and forest species) in the agricultural landscape of central Hokkaido in northern Japan. The abundance of wetland/grassland species in abandoned farmland tended to be intermediate between those of their original habitats (wetland and grassland) and other land uses (forest and farmland), and to be positively associated with the landscape openness. The abundance of forest species tended to be higher in forest areas than in areas with other land use types and was not associated with the landscape openness. The abundance and species richness of the bird community were predicted to be high in large abandoned farmland areas surrounded by open land. For wetland species, whereas total abundance was predicted to be primarily mediated by landscape openness, species richness was predicted to be primarily mediated by the farmland abandonment area. The abandoned farmland in our study area would not currently have a high conservation value for forest birds. However, the-3-/ 36 abandonment of farmland surrounded by open land would significantly improve the conservation of wetland/grassland birds in the agricultural landscape. Given the decline in the area of grassland, wetland, and low-intensity farmland, farmland abandonment provides an opportunity to conserve and restore the declining populations of wetland and grassland birds.

Aim Many studies have examined large‐scale distributions of various taxa and their drivers, emphasizing the importance of climate, topography, and land use. Most studies have dealt with distributions over a single season or annually without considering seasonality. However, animal distributions and their drivers can differ among seasons because many animals migrate to suitable climates and areas with abundant prey resources. We aim to clarify seasonality in bird distributions and their drivers. Location Japan. Methods We examined the effects of climate (annual mean temperature, snow depth), topography (elevation), and land use (extent of surrounding habitat) on bird species richness, in the breeding and wintering seasons separately, using nationwide data (254 forest and 43 grassland sites, respectively). We separately analyzed the species richness of all species, residents, short‐, and long‐distance migrants in forests and grasslands. Results In the breeding season, the annual mean temperature negatively affected all groups (except for forest and grassland residents), and the extent of surrounding habitat positively affected many groups. By contrast, in the wintering season, temperature positively affected all groups (except for forest residents), and the extent of surrounding habitat positively affected only grassland long‐distance migrants. In both seasons, the species richness of forest and grassland residents was high in regions of moderate and high temperature, respectively. Moreover, snow depth negatively affected all forest groups in the wintering season. Mapping expected species richness suggested that regions with different climates served as habitats for different groups during different seasons. Main conclusions All regions were important bird habitats depending on the season, reflecting the contrasting effects of temperature across seasons. In the breeding season, surrounding land use was also an important driver. To understand the seasonal role that each region and environment plays in maintaining species/communities, a large‐scale study considering both environmental seasonality and species distribution is needed.

While wetlands have been converted into farmlands, large amounts of farmlands are now being abandoned, and this novel habitat is expected to be inhabited by species which depend on wetlands. Here we examined the effects of habitat and landscape variables on the densities of wetland bird species in abandoned farmlands. We surveyed birds in abandoned farmlands with varied patch area, habitat, and landscape variables in Kushiro district, eastern Hokkaido, northern Japan. We also surveyed birds in 15 ha of the remaining wetlands as a reference habitat. We used abundance-based hierarchical community model (HCM) to estimate patch-level estimates of abundance of each species based on sampling plots data that only partially covered the studied patches. We observed 14 wetland species and analyzed them with HCM. Abandoned farmland patch areas had significant positive effects on the densities of two species. Tree densities and shrub coverage exerted positive and negative effects on some species. Amounts of surrounding wetland/grassland had positive effects on many species. Ensemble of species-level models suggested that 24.7 ha and 10.6 ha of abandoned farmlands would be needed to harbor a comparable total abundance and species richness in 15-ha wetlands, respectively. These required amounts can be increased/decreased depending on the covariates. The use of HCM allows us to predict species-and community-level responses under varied conditions based on incomplete sampling data. A quantity of 1.6 times larger areas of abandoned farmlands may be required to restore wetland bird communities in eastern Hokkaido.

Context Functional responses to landscape heterogeneity are context-dependent, hampering the transferability of landscape-scale conservation initiatives. Japan provides a unique opportunity to test for regional modification of landscape effects due to its broad temperature gradient, coincident with a gradient of historical disturbance intensity. Objectives To quantify and understand how regional contexts modify forest bird community responses to landscape heterogeneity across Japan. Methods We characterised the functional trait composition and diversity of breeding bird communities from 297 forest sites, and applied a cross-scale analytical framework to explain regional variation in community responses. Results The effects of landscape diversity, coincident with forest loss, varied in strength and even direction across the temperature gradient. Cool regions of Japan with highly forested, homogeneous landscapes supported bird communities dominated by forest specialists: those with narrow habitat breadths and insectivorous diets. Warmer regions comprised

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Timing is essential for survival and reproduction of organisms across the tree of life. The core circadian clock gene Clk is involved in the regulation of annual timing events and shows highly conserved sequence homology across vertebrates except for one variable region of poly-glutamine repeats. Clk genotype varies in some species with latitude, seasonal timing and migration. However, findings are inconsistent, difficult to disentangle from environmental responses, and biased towards high latitudes. Here we combine field data with a common-garden experiment to study associations of Clk polymorphism with latitude, migration and annual-cycle timing within the stonechat species complex across its trans-equatorial distribution range. Our dataset includes 950 records from 717 individuals from nine populations with diverse migratory strategies. Gene diversity was lowest in resident African and Canary Island populations and increased with latitude, independently of migration distance. Repeat length and annual-cycle timing was linked in a population-specific way. Specifically, equatorial African stonechats showed delayed timing with longer repeat length for all annual-cycle stages. Our data suggest that at low latitudes with nearly constant photoperiod, Clk genotype might orchestrate a range of consistent, individual chronotypes. In contrast, the influence of Clk on annual-cycle timing at higher latitudes might be mediated by its interactions with genes involved in (circadian) photoperiodic pathways.