Date: January 29, 2019
Source: American Ornithological Society Publications
Office
In the
world's temperate regions, proximity to roads usually reduces the reproductive
success of birds, thanks to predators that gravitate toward habitat edges.
However, the factors affecting bird nest success are much less studied in the
tropics -- so does this pattern hold true? New research published in The
Condor: Ornithological Applications shows that interactions between roads,
nesting birds, and their predators may unfold differently in Southeast Asia.
Rongrong
Angkaew of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi and her colleagues
placed 100 next boxes for the cavity-nesting White-rumped Shama in forest
interior and 100 near a road at an environmental research station in northeast
Thailand. Monitoring nests and radio-tracking 25 fledglings from each site for
seven weeks, they found that nest success was 12% higher and post-fledging
survival 24% higher at the edge versus the interior -- the opposite of the
pattern commonly observed in temperate regions.
"There
were some special challenges involved in carrying out the field work,"
says Angkaew. "When we started setting up the nest boxes in the field, we
found a lot of tracks and other signs of poachers and illegal hunting, so we
had to avoid some parts of the forest edge in order to reduce human disturbance
to our nest boxes, which could have affected nestling and fledgling survival
rates."
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