Avian mycobacteriosis is important for animal and human health; wild birds play an important role in mycobacterial species' ecology and movement. This review was aimed at reporting the role of birds in the spread of avian mycobacteriosis in human and animal populations at risk and thus a systematic review was made of PubMed, Science Direct, Scielo and Scirus databases. Mycobacteria are classifi...

  Leiomyosarcoma in birds is relatively rare. This tumor as a muscle neoplasm was reported in captive and free ranging birds. Smooth muscle cells may develop to the leiomyosracoma, but splenic smooth muscle trabeculae is most common site of the tumor growth. Although budgerigars have an incidence of neoplastic diseases but smooth muscle tumors were rarely reported in this species. To the best o...

African houbara (Chlamydotis undulata) and Asian (C. macqueenii), classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, have been over-exploited across their global ranges. The highest-profile conservation response has large-scale releases of captive-bred birds, potentially threatening wild populations through introgression. Options for increasing numbers species are habitat management to counter over...

The remnant wild population of California Condors ( Gymnogyps californianus ) of the 1980s exhibited a rapid population decline caused by high mortality rates among adult and immature birds. The most prominent mortality factor was lead poisoning resulting from ingestion of bullet fragments in carcasses. Successful captive breeding has allowed many birds to be released to the wild since 1992, ba...

To fuel their migratory endurance flights, most birds accumulate large quantities of fat prior to departure. It therefore seems logical that the decision depart on a flight depends stores, at least some extent; very small stores prohibit flight. However, studies linking migrants' estimated (or sometimes actual stores) departure likelihood or restlessness measured in captive (an accurate proxy f...

Some species thrive in captivity but others exhibit extensive psychological and physiological deficits, which can be a challenge to animal husbandry and conservation as well as wild immunology. Here, we investigated whether captivity duration impacted the regulation of a key innate immune response, inflammation, of a common wild bird species, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). Inflammation ...

Captive-reared mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) were used as sentinels to study the epizootiology of avian botulism at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, Willows, California (USA) from 1986 to 1989. Sentinel mallards were wing-clipped, and 40 to 50 birds were confined in 1.6-ha enclosures in 11 selected wetlands (pools). Enclosures were searched intensively three to four times weekly from Ju...

Aquatic birds have high cost of thermoregulation, especially during the moulting period, yet the effect of water temperature on the moulting strategy of aquatic birds has rarely been studied. Our general hypothesis is that energy savings associated with lower thermoregulation costs would be allocated to moulting processes. We predicted that aquatic birds moulting in warm water would have a high...

Only type A influenza viruses are known to cause natural infections in birds, but viruses of all 15 haemagglutinin and all nine neuraminidase influenza A subtypes in the majority of possible combinations have been isolated from avian species. Influenza A viruses infecting poultry can be divided into two distinct groups on the basis of their ability to cause disease. The very virulent viruses ca...

Selection for enhanced cognitive traits is hypothesized to produce enhancements to brain structures that support those traits. Although numerous studies suggest that this pattern is robust, there are several mechanisms that may produce this association. First, cognitive traits and their neural underpinnings may be fixed as a result of differential selection on cognitive function within specific...