The two main goals of my thesis were to further our understanding of how parental effort is related to life-history trade-offs and to see how parental investment is reflected in various potential measures of nestling quality. I looked at how fitness is maximized by examining (1) the trade-off between current and future reproduction, and (2) the trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring. To see how parents responded to energetic demands and whether each sex reacted in a similar way, I experimentally manipulated brood sizes and quantified provisioning rates. Both male and female parents with enlarged broods increased their feeding rates, but provisioning on a per nestling basis declined, so that parents fledged lighter nestlings with shorter wings. Although the incidence of mortality did not differ between control and enlarged broods, nestlings from enlarged broods were lighter than those from control broods with the same brood size, suggesting that clutch size may be individually optimized. I also looked at how nestlings responded to different levels of nutritional stress in the manipulated broods by quantifying size and body condition, plumage colouration, and the physiological measures of T-cell mediated immune responses, and corticosterone levels in nestling feathers as a long-term integrated measure of stress physiology. The size of melanin ornaments on feathers and the saturation and brightness of carotenoid colouration was associated with nestling mass in such a way that suggested that plumage characteristics reflect nestling quality. The immune function of nestlings was negatively related to brood size and nestlings in better body condition could mount greater immune responses to foreign antigens suggesting that immune responses are energetically costly. Corticosterone levels in the feathers were not related to nestling body condition and were unaffected by the experimental brood manipulation. The ii mass of male nestlings, which are the larger sex, was more compromised by brood size than female mass was. I also found sex-specific relationships between plumage characteristics and measures of physiological performance. These findings help to explain optimal clutch size and the classic trade-off between quality and quantity of offspring. They also offer new insights into the reliability of putative measures of quality in nestlings and relationships between physiological and morphological traits.

This research focuses on the spatial analysis of the habitat of two vulnerable species, the one-horn rhinoceros in the grasslands of southern Nepal, and the red-cockaded woodpecker in the Piney woods of southeast Texas, in the USA. A study sites relevant for biodiversity conservation was selected in each country: Chitwan National Park in Nepal, and areas near the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. Land-use differs in the two study areas: the first is still undergoing agrarian development while the second is in a technological phase and undergoing urbanization processes. Satellite remote sensing images were used to derive land-cover maps by supervised classification. These maps were then processed by Geographic Information Systems methods to apply habitat models based on basic resources (food and cover) and obtain habitat suitability maps. Several landscape metrics were computed to quantify the habitat characteristics especially the composition and configuration of suitable habitat patches. Sensitivity analyses were performed as the nominal values of some of the model parameters were arbitrary. Development potential probability models were used to hypothesize changes in land-use of the second study site. Various scenarios were employed to examine the impact of development on the habitat of red-cockaded woodpecker. The method derived in this study would prove beneficial to guide management and conservation of wildlife habitats.

No description available.

The geographical distribution of Piciforms' is one of the factors indicating the state of the forest. These forest birds are bioindicators of climax forest communities. In Šumava National Park, some of the Piciforms' are flag species' and thanks to that, various historical data about them exist. The goal of my study was to evaluate data from 2006-2018 monitoring and add my own monitoring data from years 2019 and 2020. This data consists of location of individual birds living in the region called Smrčina, the southernmost point of the National Park. The goal of this thesis was to determine which factors influence the distribution. The method chosen for the monitoring was so called "point count method", used from the beginning of April till the end of June. For the statistical analysis, the R software was used. And for the visualization of geographical distribution, I used qGis. The result of my thesis is that from 10 Piciform species living in the Czech Republic, 8 live in the studied region. The abundance of Black Woodpecker and Great-Spotted Woodpecker from year 2006 and Three-Toed Woodpecker from year 2009 is stable. (Great- Spotted Woodpecker with 1,6, Black Woodpecker with 0,5 and Three-Toed Woodpecker with 0,8 pairs on one hectare.) The most rare species White-Backed Woodpecker was spotted...

No description available.

Cavity-nesting communities are structured by the creation of and competition for cavities as nest-sites. Viewing these communities as interconnected webs can help identify species interactions that influence community structure. This study examines cavity-nesting bird community interactions within the fire-maintained longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystem at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. In chapter 1, I provide a background review of the ecology of my study system. In chapter 2, I use nest webs to depict the flow of cavity-creation and use at Eglin. I identified 2 webs into which most species could be placed. One web contained 6 species associated with pines. The second web contained 5 species associated with hardwoods. Red-cockaded woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) and northern flickers (Colaptes auratus) created most cavities used by other species within this community. In chapter 3, I describe snag densities and nest-site selection of the cavity-nesting bird community at Eglin. Large, mature pine snags were abundant, exceeding other reported densities for southern pine forests. Pine snags were heavily-used, despite the abundance of available red-cockaded woodpecker cavities in living pine. Hardwood snags accounted for 10% of nests found, and were used by 12 of 14 species. Diameters of nest-trees and available snags were below the range of optimal nest-snag diameters reported in other studies, indicating the need for site-specific snag management guidelines. In chapter 4, I combine a study of basic ecological principles with endangered species management to examine interactions within the cavity-nesting bird community at Eglin. I used a nest web to identify a potential indirect interaction between the red-cockaded woodpecker and large secondary cavity-nesters, mediated by the northern flicker. I used structural equation modeling to test a path model of this interaction. By experimentally manipulating cavity availability, I blocked links described in the model, confirming cavity creation and enlargement as mechanisms that influence this indirect relationship. I demonstrated that a red-cockaded woodpecker cavity-management technique could disrupt this indirect relationship by affecting northern flicker behavior, and provided an empirical example of how, in interactive ecological communities, single-species management can have indirect effects on non-target species. / Ph. D.

The focus of this research was the spontaneous magnetic alignment responses of animals. We show that snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) and crayfish (Cambarus sciotensis) spontaneously align their body axes relative to the magnetic field. In snapping turtles, this response is sensitive to low-level radio frequency fields, consistent with a mechanism involving a light-dependent radical pair mechanism. Findings from the turtle experiments also suggest that the Earth's magnetic field plays an important role in encoding spatial information in novel surroundings, and may help to organize multiple locales into a 'mental map' of familiar space. Given the importance of magnetic input in many aspects of spatial behavior, another important finding was that magnetic alignment of yearling turtles was disrupted by high levels of maternally transferred mercury, an industrial waste product found at high levels in some fresh water ecosystems. In crayfish, we investigated the effects of ectosymbionts (Annelida: Branchiobdellida) on magnetic alignment responses. Interestingly, the response of crayfish to magnetic cues parallels the complex symbiotic interaction between crayfish and their ectosymbiotic worms, which changes from mutualistic to parasitic with increasing worm density. Our working hypothesis was that these changes in spatial behavior may increase or decrease contact to other crayfish, and therefore increase or decrease transmission rates. Next, to address the ontogeny of the SMA, we attempted to replicate an earlier study showing a possible magnetic alignment response in chicken embryos. Although chicken embryos did show non-random alignment, we were not able to find a magnetic effect. Alignment is also an important feature of animal constructions and is very likely to have fitness consequences, which we explored in woodpecker cavity alignments in a meta-analysis of available global data. The latitudinal and continental pattern in 23 species of woodpeckers suggests that an alignment response can have the proximate function to regulate microclimate in the cavity and therefore, presumably, optimize incubation temperatures and increase hatching success. Overall, the presented findings show how experimental and observational studies of spontaneous alignment behavior can provide insight into the ecology and sensory biology of a wide range of animals. / Ph. D.

Since the introduction of management practices by the Forest Service to stabilize red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) populations, the number of cavity trees killed by southern pine beetles (SPB) has increased. A model of the landscape ecology of RCW and SPB in the Homochitto National Forest was created using data collected from the Forest Service and Global Atmospherics. The conclusions of the study were that the RCW and SPB utilize the same type of habitat and the stand hazard maps are an accurate means of determining the locations of SPB infestations. The functional heterogeneity maps created for the SPB and RCW would be useful predictors of future occurrences of either species if complete data were obtained.

The purpose of the study is to develop a method that generates areas in the municipality of Karlstad that satisfies the habitat area requirement for the bird species lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor). The purpose is also to compare two different databases (kNN-Sweden and the Vegetation Map). Habitat area requirement for lesser spotted woodpecker is 40 ha of forest dominated by deciduous trees, which may be fragmented over a maximum of 200 ha. The software ArcMap was used to developed method to generate habitat areas, based on input from the kNN-Sweden and the Vegetation Map databases. The habitat areas were reviewed and compared by overlay analysis and compared to reported observations. Generated habitat areas from the kNN-Sweden database and generated habitat areas from the Vegetation Map database differed significantly. The format of the input data and the threshold values are probably contributing reasons of the difference. An important shortage of the kNN-Sweden database is that a buffer zone around the water surfaces at generalization has been masked off and hence the volume of mature deciduous forest generally underestimated. The number of observations of lesser spotted woodpecker within the habitat areas differed between the kNN-Sweden and the Vegetation Map that fulfilled the requirement. The Vegetation Map had 138 observations of lesser spotted woodpecker while the KNN-Sweden only had 38 observations. / Karlstads kommun behöver finna potentiella habitat för fågelarten mindre hackspett, som är en förslagen ansvarsart i kommunen. Mindre hackspett behöver minst 40 ha äldre lövdominerad skog inom ett område på upp till 200 ha för häckning. Behovet kan ses som artens habitatvillkor vid utsökning av potentiella områden för dess habitat. Syftet med studien är att utveckla en metod för att finna områden i Karlstads kommun som uppfyller habitatvillkoret för mindre hackspett. Syftet är även att jämföra två olika databaser, kNN-Sverige och Vegetationskartan, vid dess användning som indata. kNN-Sverige är en rikstäckande databas med information om Sveriges skogar och dess grundformat är digitala kartor i rasterformat med en upplösning på 25 meter. Informationen i kNN-Sverige bygger på en kombination av fältdata från Riksskogstaxeringens stickprovsinventering och heltäckande data från satellitbilder. Vegetationskartan består av polygonskikt innehållande klassning av olika vegetationstyper. Underlaget för vegetationsdata är flygbilder av närainfrarödkänslig färgfilm som har tolkats och karterats utifrån dominansförhållanden hos olika vegetationstyper, med stöd från aktivt fältarbete. Med hjälp av programvaran ArcMap 10.3 utvecklades en metod som genererade habitatområden, baserade på indata från kNN-Sverige respektive Vegetationskartan. Därefter granskades och jämfördes resultaten genom överlagringsanalys och kontroll mot inrapporterade observationer av mindre hackspett. Genererade habitatområden för kNN-Sverige respektive Vegetationskartan skiljde sig åt och det genererades betydligt fler områden med kNN-Sverige. Grundformatet på indata och valet av gränsvärden är troligen en bidragande faktor till skillnaderna.   Resultaten från analysen av Vegetationskartan bedöms rimligare än kNN-Sveriges resultat. För kNN-Sverige saknades även en del områden där det finns mycket lövskog, till exempel vid Klarälvsdeltat. Vegetationskartans resultat påvisade däremot att det fanns områden med mycket lövskog kring Klarälvsdeltat. En stor brist hos kNN-Sverige är att en zon kring vattenytor har maskats bort vid generaliseringen och volymen av äldre lövskog generellt har underskattats, vilket bland annat kan förklara varför inte viktiga områden kring vatten kommit med. Antal observationer som låg inom habitatområden skilde sig betydligt mellan kNN-Sverige och Vegetationskartan, inom habitatområden som uppfyllde villkoret hade Vegetationskartan 138 observationer av mindre hackspett medan kNN-Sverige endast hade 38 observationer.

Nature conservation is often seen as being primarily about shielding parts of nature from human intervention, e.g. by protecting areas. Over the last decades, however, intervention is increasingly being seen as necessary for nature to regain or retain its values, through ecological restoration and active management. This complicates simple assumptions that ‘nature knows best’ and raises dilemmas which are hotly debated in the scholarly literature around ecological restoration, protected area management, environmental ethics and green political theory. However, how these dilemmas are dealt with in actual policy struggles among the conservation professionals who make management decisions is less studied. This thesis explores how issues regarding active intervention in nature are represented, debated and institutionalized within Swedish nature conservation, and to what effect. The empirical focus lies on policy struggles around the designation and management of protected forests and around efforts to save a nationally threatened bird species, the white-backed woodpecker. My analytical framework is informed by Argumentative Discourse Analysis and Political Discourse Theory, to which I contribute a further elaboration of the notion of discourse institutionalization. Based on documents and interviews with conservation professionals, I identify competing articulations of the ends and means of conservation and relate these to scholarly debates around ecological restoration and interventionist conservation management. The analysis further focuses on how elements of the different policy discourses are institutionalized in rules, routines or official policy documents. Two main competing policy discourses are found: one focused on leaving pristine nature to develop freely, and one focused on active, adaptive management for biodiversity. While the former has previously been said to characterize the Swedish conservation bureaucracy, my analysis shows it is now widely seen as outdated. Arguments which in the scholarly literature are associated with an ethically informed defense of nature’s autonomy are here dismissed as emotional, aesthetic and thus unscientific concerns, delegitimizing them within the rational, science-based public administration for nature conservation. In contrast, biodiversity is broadly forwarded as a self-evident goal for active intervention, in line with both science and policy requirements. Adaptive management for biodiversity is in that sense the dominant discourse. Still, the older discourse is institutionalized in the purposes and management plans of existing nature reserves, and its defenders have also succeeded in strengthening that institutionalization through new and more restrictive guidelines. The findings suggest that this has been possible not only because of the gate-keeping role of a few centrally placed actors, but also because their restrictive stance resonates with the outside threat of exploitation which organizes the common order of discourse. Naturalness, a term described as irrelevant by some proponents of adaptive management for biodiversity, is also shown to remain a shared concern in several ways. The results thus highlight the importance of both entrenched common sense and institutionalization of certain logics or arguments in authoritative documents. The main theoretical contribution of the thesis consists in clarifying the effects of such discourse institutionalization — using the terms durability, legibility and leverage — and showing how the processes of negotiation, re-interpretation and modification of institutions are more dynamic than some accounts of discourse institutionalization suggest. Rather than trying to resolve (and thus remove) the dilemma of intervention, the thesis points to the importance of keeping open discussion of the ultimately unanswerable questions about intervention in nature alive in both theory and practice. / Ecosystem restoration in policy and practice: restore, develop, adapt (RESTORE)