Avian Urban Ecology
Diego Gil and Henrik Brumm
Abstract
As natural habitat continues to be lost and the world steadily becomes more urbanized, biologists are increasingly studying the effect this has on wildlife. Birds are particularly good model systems since their life history, behaviour, and physiology are especially influenced by directly measurable environmental factors such as light and sound pollution. It is therefore relatively easy to compare urban individuals and populations with their rural counterparts. This text focuses on the behavioural and physiological mechanisms which facilitate adaptation and on the evolutionary process that ensu ... More
As natural habitat continues to be lost and the world steadily becomes more urbanized, biologists are increasingly studying the effect this has on wildlife. Birds are particularly good model systems since their life history, behaviour, and physiology are especially influenced by directly measurable environmental factors such as light and sound pollution. It is therefore relatively easy to compare urban individuals and populations with their rural counterparts. This text focuses on the behavioural and physiological mechanisms which facilitate adaptation and on the evolutionary process that ensues. It discusses topics such as acoustics, reproductive cues, disease, and artificial feeding, and includes a series of case studies illustrating cutting-edge research on these areas.
Keywords:
natural habitat,
wildlife,
birds,
adaptation,
evolutionary process,
acoustics,
reproductive cues,
artificial feeding
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199661572 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199661572.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Diego Gil, editor
Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
Henrik Brumm, editor
Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology, Communication and Social Behaviour Group
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