Natural antioxidants give top barn swallows a leg on competitors

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates North American barn swallows outperform their peers in reproduction -- the "currency" of evolutionary change -- by maintaining a positive balance of antioxidants commonly ...

Improving water quality could help conserve insectivorous birds

A new study shows that a widespread decline in abundance of emergent insects—whose immature stages develop in lakes and streams while the adults live on land—can help to explain the alarming decline in abundance and diversity ...

Daddy daycare: Why some songbirds care for the wrong kids

Interspecific feeding—when an adult of one species feeds the young of another—is rare among songbirds, and scientists could only speculate on why it occurs, but now, Penn State researchers have new insight into this behavior.

Getting to the root of long-term tree swallow declines

Aerial insectivores—birds that hunt for insect prey on the wing—are declining across North America. Conserving vulnerable species such as these requires a good understanding of the factors impacting them at every stage ...

How does agriculture affect vulnerable insect-eating birds?

Aerial insectivores—birds that hunt for insect prey on the wing—are declining across North America as agricultural intensification leads to diminishing insect abundance and diversity in many areas. A new study from The ...

Researcher studies birds that break all the mating rules

What can the mating behavior of birds tell us about evolution, climate change and species survival? For Peter Dunn, UWM distinguished professor of biological sciences, bird-watching offers clues to overarching ecological ...

Early arrival gives bluebirds an edge in keeping nest sites

Finders, keepers: Mountain Bluebirds are more likely to defend nest cavities against competition from other birds such as swallows if they get there first, but climate change may disrupt the migratory timing that lets them ...

Small bird tagging tech creates new ways to study animals

Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology David Winkler found a needle in a haystack: three Ithaca tree swallows among 10 million or so overwintering in Florida this January. The coup was made possible by Winkler's development ...

Chernobyl, three decades on

It was 30 years ago that a meltdown at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union released radioactive contaminants into the surroundings in northern Ukraine. Airborne contamination from what is now ...

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