Indispensable allies or overly-sentimentalized critters?: Debating the merits of insectivorous birds as defenders of crop, 1850-1914

Historian ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Brian Bonhomme
Keyword(s):  
Ecography ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 774-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole L. Michel ◽  
Adam C. Smith ◽  
Robert G. Clark ◽  
Christy A. Morrissey ◽  
Keith A. Hobson

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (35-36) ◽  
pp. 2301-2316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Saiful Mansor ◽  
Nurul Ashikin Abdullah ◽  
Muhammad Rasul Abdullah Halim ◽  
Shukor Md. Nor ◽  
Rosli Ramli
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (12) ◽  
pp. 1127-1138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina Mäntylä ◽  
Sven Kleier ◽  
Carita Lindstedt ◽  
Silke Kipper ◽  
Monika Hilker

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre S. Gilburn ◽  
Nils Bunnefeld ◽  
John McVean Wilson ◽  
Marc S. Botham ◽  
Tom M. Brereton ◽  
...  

There has been widespread concern that neonicotinoid pesticides may be adversely impacting wild and managed bees for some years, but recently attention has shifted to examining broader effects they may be having on biodiversity. For example in the Netherlands, declines in insectivorous birds are positively associated with levels of neonicotinoid pollution in surface water. In England, the total abundance of widespread butterfly species declined by 58% on farmed land between 2000 and 2009 despite both a doubling in conservation spending in the UK, and predictions that climate change should benefit most species. Here we build models of the UK population indices from 1985 to 2012 for 17 widespread butterfly species that commonly occur at farmland sites. Of the factors we tested, three correlated significantly with butterfly populations. Summer temperature and the index for a species the previous year are both positively associated with butterfly indices. By contrast, the number of hectares of farmland where neonicotinoid pesticides are used is negatively associated with butterfly indices. Indices for 15 of the 17 species show negative associations with neonicotinoid usage. The declines in butterflies have largely occurred in England, where neonicotinoid usage is at its highest. In Scotland, where neonicotinoid usage is comparatively low, butterfly numbers are stable. Further research is needed urgently to show whether there is a causal link between neonicotinoid usage and the decline of widespread butterflies or whether it simply represents a proxy for other environmental factors associated with intensive agriculture.


The Condor ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas W Tallamy ◽  
W Gregory Shriver

Abstract A flurry of recently published studies indicates that both insects and birds have experienced wide-scale population declines in the last several decades. Curiously, whether insect and bird declines are causally linked has received little empirical attention. Here, we hypothesize that insect declines are an important factor contributing to the decline of insectivorous birds. We further suggest that insect populations essential to insectivorous birds decline whenever non-native lumber, ornamental, or invasive plant species replace native plant communities. We support our hypothesis by reviewing studies that show (1) due to host plant specialization, insect herbivores typically do poorly on non-native plants; (2) birds are often food limited; (3) populations of insectivorous bird species fluctuate with the supply of essential insect prey; (4) not all arthropod prey support bird reproduction equally well; and (5) terrestrial birds for which insects are an essential source of food have declined by 2.9 billion individuals over the last 50 years, while terrestrial birds that do not depend on insects during their life history have gained by 26.2 million individuals, a 111-fold difference. Understanding the consequences of insect declines, particularly as they affect charismatic animals like birds, may motivate land managers, homeowners, and restoration ecologists to take actions that reverse these declines by favoring the native plant species that support insect herbivores most productively.


FACETS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoit Talbot ◽  
Nusha Keyghobadi ◽  
Brock Fenton

Cimicid insects, bed bugs and their allies, include about 100 species of blood-feeding ectoparasites. Among them, a few have become widespread and abundant pests of humans. Cimicids vary in their degree of specialization to hosts. Whereas most species specialize on insectivorous birds or bats, the common bed bug can feed on a range of distantly related host species, such as bats, humans, and chickens. We suggest that association with humans and generalism in bed bugs led to fundamentally different living conditions that fostered rapid growth and expansion of their populations. We propose that the evolutionary and ecological success of common bed bugs reflected exploitation of large homeothermic hosts (humans) that sheltered in buildings. This was a departure from congeners whose hosts are much smaller and often heterothermic. We argue that interesting insights into the biology of pest species may be obtained using an integrated view of their ecology and evolution.


2013 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Bolduc ◽  
Nicolas Casajus ◽  
Pierre Legagneux ◽  
Laura McKinnon ◽  
H. Grant Gilchrist ◽  
...  

AbstractArctic arthropods are essential prey for many vertebrates, including birds, but arthropod populations and phenology are susceptible to climate change. The objective of this research was to model the relationship between seasonal changes in arthropod abundance and weather variables using data from a collaborative pan-Canadian (Southampton, Herschel, Bylot, and Ellesmere Islands) study on terrestrial arthropods. Arthropods were captured with passive traps that provided a combined measure of abundance and activity (a proxy for arthropod availability to foraging birds). We found that 70% of the deviance in daily arthropod availability was explained by three temperature covariates: mean daily temperature, thaw degree-day, and thaw degree-day2. Models had an adjusted R2 of 0.29–0.95 with an average among sites and arthropod families of 0.67. This indicates a moderate to strong fit to the raw data. The models for arthropod families with synchronous emergence, such as Tipulidae (Diptera), had a better fit (average adjusted R2 of 0.80) than less synchronous taxa, such as Araneae (R2 = 0.60). Arthropod abundance was typically higher in wet than in mesic habitats. Our models will serve as tools for researchers who want to correlate insectivorous bird breeding data to arthropod availability in the Canadian Arctic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Díaz-Siefer ◽  
Jaime Tapia-Gatica ◽  
Jaime Martínez-Harms ◽  
Jan Bergmann ◽  
Juan L. Celis-Diez

Although birds have traditionally been considered anosmic, increasing evidence indicates that olfaction plays an important role in the foraging behaviours of insectivorous birds. Recent studies have shown that birds can exploit herbivore-induced plant volatiles and sexual pheromones of adult insects to locate their prey. Many insectivorous birds prey on immature insects, providing relevant ecosystem services as pest regulators in natural and agricultural ecosystems. We asked whether birds could rely on chemical cues emitted by the immature stages of insects to prey on them. To address this question, we performed field experiments to evaluate if insectivorous birds can detect the aggregation pheromone produced by the larvae of the carpenter worm, Chilecomadia valdiviana . Groups of five artificial larvae were placed in branches of 72 adult trees in a remnant fragment of a sclerophyllous forest in central Chile. Each grouping of larvae contained a rubber septum loaded with either larval pheromone as treatment or solvent alone as control. We found that the number of larvae damaged by bird pecks was significantly higher in groups with dispensers containing the larval extract than in control groups. Our results show that birds can rely on immature insect-derived chemical cues used for larvae aggregation to prey on them.


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