Resumen. Las infestaciones con las moscas parásitas Protocalliphora spp. y Trypocalliphora braueri tienen varios efectos negativos sobre la condición de los pichones de las aves. Sin embargo, la infestación por sí sola rara vez reduce el éxito de emplumamiento en ausencia de otros agentes de estrés, como el clima inclemente. Estudios previos han documentado los efectos de estas moscas sobre la condición de los pichones y el éxito de emplumamiento, pero sin información acerca de la supervivencia de los volantones, por lo que el efecto completo de la infestación no resulta claro aún. Para investigar de forma completa el efecto fLEDGING SUCCESS IS A POOR INDICATOR Of THE EffECTS Of bIRD bLOw fLIES ON OVENbIRD SURVIVAL El Éxito de Emplumamiento es un Mal Indicador de los Efectos de las Moscas Parásitas de Aves sobre la Supervivencia en Seiurus aurocapillaAbstract. Infestations of bird blow flies (Protocalliphora spp. and Trypocalliphora braueri) have various negative effects on the condition of nestling birds. In the absence of other stressors such as inclement weather, however, infestation alone rarely reduces fledging success. Previous studies have documented effects of blow flies on nestling condition and fledging success. without information regarding fledgling survival, the full effect of blow-fly infestation remains unclear. To fully investigate the effect of blow-fly infestation on reproductive success of the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla), we monitored infested and noninfested nests and monitored fledglings from each by using radio telemetry. blow flies did not affect birds during the nestling period, as brood size, mean nestling mass, fledging success, and time to fledging in infested and non-infested nests were no different. fledgling survival and minimum distance traveled the first day after fledging, however, were significantly lower for infected fledglings than for those that were not infected. we conclude that the stress of the early fledgling period combined with recent or concurrent blow-fly infection increases mortality in young Ovenbirds. Our results demonstrate the importance of including the post-fledging period in investigations of the effects of ectoparasitic infestations on birds.

Attempts to conserve declining tiger Panthera tigris populations and distributions have experienced limited success. The poaching of tiger prey is a key threat to tiger persistence; a clear understanding of tiger diet is a prerequisite to conserve dwindling populations. We used unpublished data on tiger diet in combination with two previously published studies to examine fine-scale spatio-temporal changes in tiger diet relative to prey abundance in Chitwan National Park, Nepal, and aggregated data from the three studies to examine the effect that study duration and the size of the study area have on estimates of tiger diet. Our results correspond with those of previous studies: in all three studies, tiger diet was dominated by members of Cervidae; small to medium-sized prey was important in one study. Tiger diet was unrelated to prey abundance, and the aggregation of studies indicates that increasing study duration and study area size both result in increased dietary diversity in terms of prey categories consumed, and increasing study duration changed which prey species contributed most to tiger diet. Based on our results, we suggest that managers focus their efforts on minimizing the poaching of all tiger prey, and that future studies of tiger diet be of long duration and large spatial extent to improve our understanding of spatio-temporal variation in estimates of tiger diet.

Management of game animals requires understanding of factors that affect harvest levels. Although influenced by international law, bobcat (Lynx rufus) management is the responsibility of state or provincial agencies, and jurisdictional environmental, ecological, and regulatory differences may alter which variables influence harvest. Consequently, our understanding of the factors driving bobcat harvest should be at a scale similar to that at which they are managed. We associated 32 years of bobcat harvest data from Minnesota with socioeconomic (e.g., pelt prices, license sales) and ecological variables (e.g., prey abundance, bobcat-specific index of winter severity) to determine what variables most strongly influenced annual bobcat harvest. We constructed candidate negative binomial generalized linear models based on an informationtheoretic approach and used quasi-likelihood Akaike's Information Criterion adjusted for small sample size to assess the relative performance of each model. Our best model suggested that annual bobcat harvest in Minnesota was positively related to the proportion of scent stations visited by bobcats and season length, and negatively related to the proportion of days when the maximum temperature did not exceed the bobcat's lower critical temperature. Our results differ from those of other studies examining factors influencing furbearer harvest that have suggested furbearer harvest is driven primarily by pelt price, and suggest that managers can influence the annual harvest of bobcats by changing season length. ß 2011 The Wildlife Society.