Reaching from interior Alaska across Canada to Labrador and Newfoundland, North America's boreal forest is the largest wilderness area left on the planet. It is critical habitat for billions of ...birds; more than 300 species regularly breed there. After the breeding season, many boreal birds migrate to seasonal habitats across the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This volume brings together new research on boreal bird biology and conservation. It highlights the importance of the region to the global avifauna and to the connectivity between the boreal forest and ecoregions throughout the Americas. The contributions showcase a unique set of perspectives on the migration, wintering ecology, and conservation of bird communities that are tied to the boreal forest in ways that may not have been previously considered.
Louse Flies Nartshuk, E. P; Matyukhin, A. V; Shapoval, A. P ...
Entomological review,
04/2020, Letnik:
100, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Louse flies (Diptera, Hippoboscidae) were collected off 38 species of birds from 16 genera of 14 families and 5 orders. Birds were captured in large funnel traps and mist nets on the Courish Spit ...(Kaliningrad Province, Russia). Five species of ornithophilic louse flies were found: Ornithomya avicularia (Linnaeus, 1758), O. chloropus (Bergroth, 1901), O. fringillina (Curtis, 1856), O. comosa (Austen, 1930), and Crataerina hirundinis (Linnaeus, 1758); besides, the mammalophilic species Lipoptena fortisetosa (Maa, 1965) was recorded on a non-specific bird host. The association of louse flies with their hosts, infestation parameters, collection data, and general geographic distribution of the recorded louse fly species are considered. The overall infestation of birds with louse flies was low. The louse fly fauna of Kaliningrad Province is compared with the faunas of the adjacent territories.
Winged Sentinels Wormworth, Janice; Sekercioglu, Cagan H.
07/2011
eBook
'The ability of the birds to show us the consequences of our own actions is among their most important and least appreciated attributes. Despite the free advice of the birds, we do not pay ...attention', said Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947. From ice-dependent penguins of Antarctica to songbirds that migrate across the Sahara, birds' responses provide early warning signs of the impact of climate change. Winged Sentinels: Birds and Climate Change uses colourful examples to show how particular groups of birds face heightened threats from climate change and to explore how we can help birds adapt in a warming world. Generously illustrated with colour photographs, the book is a fascinating insight into what climate change means for birds, and the potential consequences of ignoring these warning signs.
Global Patterns of Influenza A Virus in Wild Birds Olsen, Björn; Munster, Vincent J; Wallensten, Anders ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
04/2006, Letnik:
312, Številka:
5772
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza of the H5N1 subtype in Asia, which has subsequently spread to Russia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, has put increased focus on the role of ...wild birds in the persistence of influenza viruses. The ecology, epidemiology, genetics, and evolution of pathogens cannot be fully understood without taking into account the ecology of their hosts. Here, we review our current knowledge on global patterns of influenza virus infections in wild birds, discuss these patterns in the context of host ecology and in particular birds' behavior, and identify some important gaps in our current knowledge.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses of the H5 A/goose/Guangdong/1/96 lineage can cause severe disease in poultry and wild birds, and occasionally in humans. In recent years, H5 HPAI ...viruses of this lineage infecting poultry in Asia have spilled over into wild birds and spread via bird migration to countries in Europe, Africa, and North America. In 2016/2017, this spillover resulted in the largest HPAI epidemic on record in Europe and was associated with an unusually high frequency of reassortments between H5 HPAI viruses and cocirculating low-pathogenic avian influenza viruses. Here, we show that the seven main H5 reassortant viruses had various combinations of gene segments 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. Using detailed time-resolved phylogenetic analysis, most of these gene segments likely originated from wild birds and at dates and locations that corresponded to their hosts’ migratory cycles. However, some gene segments in two reassortant viruses likely originated from domestic anseriforms, either in spring 2016 in east China or in autumn 2016 in central Europe. Our results demonstrate that, in addition to domestic anseriforms in Asia, both migratory wild birds and domestic anseriforms in Europe are relevant sources of gene segments for recent reassortant H5 HPAI viruses. The ease with which these H5 HPAI viruses reassort, in combination with repeated spillovers of H5 HPAI viruses into wild birds, increases the risk of emergence of a reassortant virus that persists in wild bird populations yet remains highly pathogenic for poultry.
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