There is mounting evidence that urban areas influence biodiversity. Generalizations however require that multiple urban areas on multiple continents be examined. Here we evaluated the role of urban areas on avian diversity for a South American city, allowing us to examine the effects of urban features common worldwide, using the city of Valdivia, Chile as case study. We assessed the number of b...

A survey on mite fauna of bird nests was carried out in Tehran, Golestan and Sistan & Baluchestan provinces in 2008. A total of 18 nests belonging to six bird species, namely Rock Dove Columba livia, House Sparrow Passer domesticus, Eastern Olivaceous Warbler Hippolais (Iduna) pallida, White-eared Bulbul Pycnonotus leucotis, Common Magpie Pica pica and Crested Lark Galerida cristata were collec...

Supplementary feeding of birds may have considerable ecological and evolutionary effects on bird communities. However, there is a lack basic information the prevalence, frequency quality supplementary feeders, especially in African urban areas. Here we describe reliability artificial nectar feeders suburbs Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, where many bird-pollinated plant species occur. Resu...

The importance of multispecies models for understanding complex ecological processes and interactions is beginning to be realized. Recent developments, such as those by Lahoz-Monfort et al. (2011), have enabled synchrony in demographic parameters across multiple species to be explored. Species in a similar environment would be expected to be subject to similar exogenous factors, although their ...

Private gardens are recognised as potentially important refugia for butterflies. Yet little is known about how might be contributing to butterfly conservation, their restricted accessibility has meant that garden habitats not well-represented in traditional monitoring schemes. Garden BirdWatch (GBW) the UK's largest structured bird survey, comprising over 25 years of weekly counts from more tha...

1 Centre for Ornithology, School of Biosciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, 2 Centre for Biodiversity and Biosecurity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, 3 Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA, 4 Environmental Futures Resear...