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Bird flight has always intrigued mankind. This book provides an up-to-date account of the existing knowledge on the subject, offering new insights and challenges some established views. A brief history of the science of flight introduces the basic physical principles governing aerial locomotion. This is followed by chapters on the flight-related functional morphology. The anatomy of the flight apparatus includes the wings, tail, and body. Treatment of the wings emphasizes the difference in shape of the arm and hand part. The structural complexity and mechanical properties of feathers receive special attention. Aerodynamic principles used by birds are explained in theory by applying Newton’s laws, and in practice by showing the direction and velocity of the flow around the arm and hand wing. The Archaeopteryx fossils remain crucial to the understanding of the evolution of bird flight despite the recent discovery of a range of well-preserved ancient birds. A novel hypothesis explaining the enigmatic details of the Archaeopteryx remains and challenges established theories regarding the origin of bird flight. Take-off, flapping flight, gliding, and landing are the basic ingredients of bird flight, and birds use a variety of flight styles from hovering to soaring. Muscles are the engines that generate the forces required to control the wings and tail, and to work during flapping motion. The energy required to fly can be estimated or measured directly, and a comparison of the empirical results, provides insights into the trend in metabolic costs of flight of birds varying in shape and mass from hummingbirds to albatrosses.

As people have spread around the world, they have taken with them a broad range of other species to satisfy a variety of human needs. Some of these species went on to establish wild populations well outside their native ranges. These biological invaders are a major component of current global change, and often represent threats to the maintenance of global biodiversity, human health, and the success of human economic enterprises. The continuing globalization of our society ensures that the need to understand the process of biological invasion will only increase in the future. There is also a growing recognition that the study of biological invaders provides significant insight into basic questions in ecology and evolution. Exotic birds provide a particularly good opportunity to study the causes and consequences of biological invasions. By combining good historical records of bird introductions with the detailed information available on many other aspects of avian biology, this book advances understanding of the invasion process while also exploring avian conservation biology, and basic principles of ecology and evolution. Chapters cover causes of non-randomness in which species get transported and released into novel environments, the stochastic (relating to numbers released) and deterministic (relating to species and location) effects that influence establishment success, patterns and processes in range expansion, and the ecology, genetics, and evolution of exotic birds in their new environment.

After the chicken, the House Sparrow is the most widely distributed bird species in the world, occurring on all continents except Antarctica and on most human-inhabited islands. Although its Latin name is Passer domesticus, it is certainly not domesticated. In fact, it is widely regarded as a pest species and is consequently not protected in most of its extensive range. This combination of ubiquity and minimal legal protection has contributed to its wide use in studies by avian biologists throughout the world. This book reviews and summarizes the results of these global studies on House Sparrows, and provides a springboard for future studies on the species. House Sparrows have been used to study natural selection in introduced species, circadian rhythms, and the neuroendocrine control of the avian annual cycle. One current question of considerable interest concerns the catastrophic House Sparrow population decline in several urban centers in Europe. Is the House Sparrow a contemporary canary in the mine? Other topics of broad interest include the reproductive and flock-foraging strategies of sparrows, and sexual selection and the function of the male badge in the species. The book also explores the role of the House Sparrow in disease transmission to humans and their domesticated animals.

This book focuses on the current understanding of a set of topics in ecological and environmental physiology that are of particular interest to ornithologists, but which also have broad biological relevance. The introductory chapter covers the basic body plan of birds and their still-enigmatic evolutionary history. The focus then shifts to a consideration of the essential components of that most fundamental of avian attributes: the ability to fly. The emphasis is on feather evolution and development, flight energetics and aerodynamics, migration, and as a counterpoint, the curious secondary evolution of flightlessness that has occurred in several lineages. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters, which present specific physiological topics within a strongly ecological and environmental framework. Chapter 2 covers gas exchange and thermal and osmotic balance, together with the central role of body size. Chapter 3 addresses ‘classical’ life history parameters — male and female reproductive costs, parental care and investment in offspring, and fecundity versus longevity tradeoffs — from an eco-physiological perspective. Chapter 4 offers a comprehensive analysis of feeding and digestive physiology, adaptations to challenging environments (high altitude, deserts, marine habitats, cold), developmental adaptations, and neural specializations (notably those important in foraging, long-distance navigation, and song production). Throughout the book, classical studies are integrated with the latest research findings. Numerous important and intriguing questions await further work, and the book concludes with a discussion of research methods and approaches — emphasizing cutting-edge technology — and a final chapter on future directions that should help point the way forward for both young and senior scientists.

Chickadees and titmice are among the most popular birds in North America, due in large part to their readiness to use bird feeders, to nest in urban gardens, and even to be trained to take food from people's hands. These attributes have also made them (and their Eurasian tit counterparts) perhaps the most intensively studied bird family in the world. Long-term research in Europe has yielded some of the most comprehensive data on the impact of global warming on the breeding ecology of birds. Chickadees have amongst the best-studied and most complex vocal behaviour of any bird species, displaying one of the closest analogies to human sentence structure in the animal kingdom in their familiar chick-a-dee call. The social dominance hierarchies commonly witnessed in the form of squabbling at winter feeders are some of most stable and closely studied, and have huge impacts on controlling the lives of these small birds. Their food-storing behaviour, and the brain and physiological mechanisms controlling this, has contributed significantly to our wider understanding of spatial orientation. In recent years, these birds have also been used as model species for investigating topics as diverse as inter-species hybridization, the impacts of forest fragmentation and complex systems of communication. In short, chickadees and titmice have contributed enormously to our understanding of a myriad of topics in ecology, behaviour, and psychology. Each chapter in this book reviews the latest advances in evolution and behavioural research that have been accomplished through the study of North American Parids, and compares and contrasts this literature with research on their Eurasian counterparts as well as other avian families.

Climate change issues are attracting rapidly increasing interest from a wide range of biologists due to their unprecedented effects on global biodiversity, although there remains a lack of general knowledge as to the environmental consequences of such rapid change. Compared with any other class of animals, birds provide more long-term data and extensive time series, a more geographically and taxonomically diverse source of information, a richer source of data on a greater range of topics dealing with the effects of climate change, and a longer tradition of extensive research. The first edition of the book was widely cited and this new edition continues to provide an exhaustive and up-to-date synthesis of our rapidly expanding level of knowledge as it relates to birds, highlighting new methods and areas for future research. Effects of Climate Change on Birds is aimed at professional avian biologists and ornithologists as well as graduate students of avian ecology, evolution, and conservation. It will also be of relevance and use to a more general audience of climate change biologists, administrators, and conservationists because of the potential relevance of its theoretical and empirical content to other organisms including ourselves.

Essential Ornithology provides the reader with a concise but comprehensive introduction to the biology of birds, one of the most widely studied taxonomic groups. The book begins by considering the dinosaur origins of birds and their subsequent evolution. Development, anatomy, and physiology are then discussed followed by chapters devoted to avian reproduction, migration, ecology, and conservation. Sections dealing with aspects of bird/human relationships and bird conservation give the book an applied context. This new edition has been thoroughly updated, providing new information from rapidly developing fields including the avian fossil record, urban and agricultural ecology, responses to climate change, invasive species biology, technologies to track movement, avian disease, and the role of citizen scientists. There is also a greater focus on North American ornithology. Drawing extensively upon the wider scientific literature, this engaging text places the results of classical studies of avian biology alongside the most recent scientific breakthroughs. Useful case studies are presented in a concise and engaging style with the student reader foremost in mind. Key points are highlighted and suggestions for guided reading and key references are included throughout. Essential Ornithology provides a companion text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in avian science, as well as a useful reference for professional researchers and consultants. Amateur ornithologists will also find this book offers a scientifically rigorous and accessible overview for a more general readership.

Evolutionary biomechanics is the study of evolution through the analysis of biomechanical systems. Its unique advantage is the precision with which physical constraints and performance can be predicted from first principles. Biomechanical examples illustrate particularly clearly the optimising tendency of natural selection, and the way in which adaptive change is contingent upon phylogenetic history and physical constraint. Instead of reviewing the entire breadth of the biomechanical literature, this book explores a few key examples in depth, as vehicles for discussing fundamental concepts, analytical techniques, and evolutionary theory. Each chapter explores a different conceptual theme, developing the theory and techniques required for analyses in evolutionary biomechanics. Examples from terrestrial biomechanics, metabolic scaling, and bird flight are used to analyse how physics constrains the design space that natural selection is free to explore, and how adaptive evolution finds solutions to trade-offs between multiple complex conflicting performance objectives. The book draws upon a uniquely broad range of theory in achieving its goals, bringing together population genetics, statistics, mechanics, aerodynamics, and multi-objective optimization in one volume. The book begins by rehabilitating the adaptive landscape metaphor into our modern gene-centric understanding of evolution, and concludes with a phylogenetically-controlled comparative analysis of wing design in birds that motivates a mapping from morphospace to performance space, and an analysis of adaptation through the theory of multi-objective optimization. The concept of Pareto optimality is used to crystallize Evolutionary Biomechanics as the study of the interaction of selection, phylogeny, and constraint in the diversification of species through adaptive evolution.

Birds, in contrast to mammals, are thought to have fragile bones, which are difficult to identify when found, so have no useful archaeological record. This book is based on an accumulation of over 9,000 records of species identified from sites in the British Isles, which indicates that the contrary is true. The difficulties of identification are discussed, but 9,000 records is a substantial body of evidence, which is reviewed. The book summarizes the archaeological record of birds in the British Isles, and integrates this factual basis into an overview of the history of the bird fauna in these islands. It tells us much about what native birds we should have, which ones we have lost, and therefore which ones would be worth discussing for reintroduction. Recent discussions suppose that eagle owls are not native, but archaeological evidence suggests they were. White-tailed eagles were widespread up to Saxon times at least, and cranes (not the same as herons) were widespread through to mediaeval times. When did our most common bird arrive? Where from? Which species is it, anyway? And how does the balance of wild, introduced and domestic birds compare with the similar balance of mammals, or with the balance 7,000 years ago, before farming altered the landscape?

Disease ecology is an interdisciplinary field that recognizes that the host–parasite interaction is shaped by the environment and can affect and be affected by the processes that occur across all levels of ecological organization. This book focuses on the dynamics of infectious diseases for wild avian hosts across different scales of biological organization—from within-host processes to landscape-level patterns. Parasite–bird interactions are both influenced by and have consequences for every level of ecological hierarchy, from the physiology, behavior, and evolution of individual hosts up to the complex biotic and abiotic interactions occurring within biological communities and ecosystems. As the most diverse group of extant vertebrates, birds have evolved to utilize every ecological niche on earth, giving them the capacity to serve as a host of pathogens in every part of the world. The diversity of birds is outmatched only by the diversity of the parasite fauna infecting them. Given the overwhelming diversity of both avian hosts and their parasites, we have only scratched the surface regarding the role that pathogens play in avian biology and the role that birds play in the maintenance and spread of zoonotic pathogens. In addition to this understudied diversity, parasite–bird interactions are increasingly occurring in rapidly changing global environments—thus, their ecology is changing—and this shapes the complex ways by which parasites influence the interconnected health of birds, humans, and shared ecosystems. The chapters in this book illustrate that the understanding of these complex and multiscale interactions requires an inherently integrative approach.

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker holds the attention of birders and naturalists like no other species of bird, so it was huge news in 2005 when the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker had been found and recorded on video along the Cache River. The announcement inspired ornithologist Geoff Hill and two of his research assistants to search some river swamps in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle. A weekend outing turned into a year-long adventure, however, when the little team of explorers found an Ivory-billed Woodpecker along the Choctawhatchee River on the Florida panhandle. Professor and author Geoff Hill gives a first-hand account of the discovery and follow-up search for this rarest and more noble of North American birds. Rather than a bland technical account, Hill conveys the trials and tribulations of chasing a mostly silent and elusive bird through a vast swamp wilderness. As a birder scientist with a knack for telling stories, Hill provides a unique perspective on ivorybill searches, and what does and does not constitute proof of this elusive bird. The story is as much a quest for the last remnants of an American wilderness as it is a search for a rare bird.

Avian incubation is a critical part of reproduction. This new book covers four key areas: nest, eggs, incubation, and the study of avian reproduction. After an initial introduction about incubation research and a chapter reviewing the fossil record of avian reproduction, Chapters 3–6 focus on nest biology, including construction behaviour, functional properties, nest ecology, and the potential effects of climate change. Chapters 7–11 deal with egg biology with chapters addressing microbiology, allometry, energetics, and eggs as signals. Behaviour, energetics of incubation, and the effects of incubation on post-hatching phenotype are reviewed in Chapters 12–14. The study of avian reproduction is a new topic that was not covered in the previous book published 13 years earlier. Chapters 15–17 deal with techniques for studying nests and the processes of incubation, the application of incubation science to conservation, and the contribution of citizen science to the study of reproduction of wild birds. The final chapter looks forward to new areas of study. Overall, this book collates and describes a range of recent developments in avian reproduction and complements the previous book in bringing the field right up to date.

The House Finch is among the most mundane birds, so ubiquitous and familiar across the U.S. and Canada that it does not rate a glance from most bird enthusiasts. But males have carotenoid-based plumage coloration that varies markedly among individuals, making the House Finch a model species for studies of the function and evolution of colorful plumage. In more depth and detail than has been attempted for any species of bird, this book takes a tour of the hows and whys of ornamental plumage coloration. The book begins by reviewing the history of the study of colorful plumage, which began in earnest with the debates of Darwin and Wallace but which was largely forgotten by the middle of the 20th century. Documenting the extensive plumage variation among males both within and between populations of House Finches, the book explores the mechanisms behind plumage variation and looks at the fitness consequences of condition-dependent ornament display for both males and females. The book concludes by examining the processes by which carotenoid-based ornamental coloration may have evolved.

The natural world contains a huge amount of constantly changing information. Limitations on, and specializations within, sensory systems mean that each species receives only a small part of that information. In essence, information is filtered by sensory systems. Sensory ecology aims to understand the nature and functions of those filters for each species and sensory system. Fluxes of information, and the perceptual challenges posed by different natural environments, are so large that sensory and behavioural specializations have been inevitable. There have been many trade-offs in the evolution of sensory capacities, and trade-offs and complementarity between different sensory capacities within species. Many behavioural tasks may have influenced the evolution of sensory capacities in birds, but the principal drivers have been associated with just two tasksforaging and predator detection. The key task is the control of the position and timing of the approach of the bill towards a target. Other tasks, such as locomotion and reproduction, are achieved within the requirements of foraging and predator detection. Information thatguides behaviours may often be sparse and partial and key behaviours may only be possible because of cognitive abilities which allow adequate interpretation of partial information. Human modifications of natural environments present perceptual challenges that cannot always be met by the information available to particular birds. Mitigations of the negative effects of human intrusions into natural environments must take account of the sensory ecology of the affected species. Effects of environmental changes cannot be understood sufficiently by viewing them through the filters of human sensory systems.