For successful conservation of biodiversity, it is vital to know whether protected areas in increasingly fragmented landscapes effectively safeguard species. However, how large habitat fragments must be, and what level of protection is required to sustain species, remains poorly known. We compiled a global dataset on almost 2000 bird species in 741 forest fragments varying in size and protection status, and show that protection is associated with higher bird occurrence, especially for threatened species. Protection becomes increasingly effective with increasing size of forest fragments. For forest fragments >50 ha our results show that strict protection (International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] categories I-IV) is strongly associated with higher bird occurrence, whereas fragments had to be at least 175 ha for moderate protection (IUCN categories V and VI) to have a positive effect. This meta-analysis quantifies the importance of fragment size, protection status, and their interaction for the conservation of bird species communities, and stresses that protection should not be limited to large pristine areas.

Summary Cyclonic storms (often called hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones) often cause population declines in vulnerable bird species, and the intensity of these storms appears to be increasing due to climate change. Prior studies have reported short-term impacts of hurricanes on avifauna, but few have examined long-term impacts. Over two decades (1993–2018), we periodically surveyed a subspecies of West Indian Woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris nyeanus on San Salvador, a small island in The Bahamas, to determine its distribution on the island, habitat use, and effects of hurricanes on abundance and population size. We conducted passive and playback surveys, supplemented with mist-netting. Woodpeckers were found only in the northern part of San Salvador, despite extensive surveys throughout other accessible areas of the island. Birds occupied areas with taller coppice adjacent to sabal palm Sabal palmetto groves, which were used for nesting. After hurricanes with >160 kph winds passed over San Salvador, woodpecker densities declined to 35–40% of pre-hurricane densities, but generally recovered back to pre-hurricane densities within 2–3 years. Based on an estimated density of woodpeckers within a ~1,400 ha occupied area, we calculated a population size of approximately 240 individuals (CI = 68-408). However, the population declined to far lower numbers immediately following hurricanes. Under IUCN Red List criteria, M. s. nyeanus classifies as ‘Critically Endangered’, and could be especially sensitive to future hurricanes if they occur at a high enough frequency or intensity to prevent the population from rebounding. Given the small size, isolation, and vulnerability of this population, we recommend preservation of the core habitat, continued monitoring, and further research. Our study shows that small, threatened bird populations can be resilient to the effects of hurricanes, but increased intensity of hurricanes, in combination with other threats, may limit this resilience in the future.

We analyzed changes in abundance of terrestrial birds on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, for a 32 year period during which 3 major hurricanes occurred. Using 1987 as a baseline year, because it followed a 27 year hiatus when no major hurricanes hit the island, we assessed the impact of hurricanes on vegetation structure and bird populations. Bird abundance was determined for 25 m radius circular plots that were surveyed each year of the study along the same transects. Percent cover of trees, shrubs, and herbs was measured in each plot in 1987, 1990, and 2019. All of the survey plots were in moist forest or dry woodland in Virgin Islands National Park. Of 13 common birds, 5 did not show marked and consistent declines in abundance following hurricanes even though the structure of vegetation on the island was heavily modified by storms. Three of these species are insectivores. Seven species declined or showed habitat shifts following Hurricane Hugo in 1989, but 5 of these populations subsequently increased and most recovered to close to their 1987 abundance during the 1990s. Six of these 7 species also declined or showed habitat shifts following Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. The most marked declines in the aftermath of hurricanes in both 1989 and 2017 were for frugivores and nectarivores, especially hummingbirds. Most common bird species in Virgin Islands National Park were either resistant to the effects of severe hurricanes or resilient in the decade following a hurricane. However, more research is needed to assess the status of vulnerable species such as hummingbirds and rare resident species (Bridled Quail-Dove [Geotrygon mystacea] and Puerto Rican Flycatcher [Myiarchus antillarum]).

We analyzed data from a woodland site for a 59-year period to determine whether changes in bird populations are related to changes in the diversity and relative abundance of woody plant species even when vegetation structure, degree of forest fragmentation in the surrounding landscape, and regional changes in bird populations are taken into account. Principal component analyses generated vegetation factors encompassing variables such as total basal area, shrub density, basal area of common tree species, and measures of tree and shrub species diversity. We also calculated a forest edge/forest area index based on GIS analysis of the landscape within 2 km of the study site. Poisson regression models revealed relationships between these covariates and population changes for 19 bird species and for seven groups of species characterized by similar migration strategies or habitat requirements. All groups of habitat specialists showed a positive relationship with the first vegetation factor, which indicates that they declined as total basal area and dominance of oaks and maples increased and as tree and shrub diversity decreased. This suggests that floristic diversity may be important for determining habitat quality. Bird species associated with the shrub layer and with hemlock stands showed positive relationships with the second vegetation factor, suggesting that the recent decline in eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) because of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) had an adverse impact on these species. Forest migrants, shrub-layer specialists, long-distance migrants and permanent residents showed negative relationships with the forest edge/forest interior index, indicating that conservation efforts to protect bird communities should take the wider landscape into account. The strongest relationship for most species and species groups was with the first vegetation factor, which suggests that species composition and diversity of trees and shrubs may be especially important in determining abundance of many forest bird species.

We used repeated sightings of individual birds encountered in community-level surveys to investigate the relative roles of habitat and biological interactions in determining the distribution and abundance of each species. To analyze these data, we developed a multispecies N-mixture model that allowed estimation of both positive and negative correlations between abundances of different species while also estimating the effects of habitat and the effects of errors in detection of each species. Using a combination of single- and multispecies N-mixture modeling, we examined for each species whether our measures of habitat were sufficient to account for the variation in encounter histories of individual birds or whether other habitat variables or interactions with other species needed to be considered. In the community that we studied, habitat appeared to be more influential than biological interactions in determining the distribution and abundance of most avian species. Our results lend support to the hypothesis that abundances of forest specialists are negatively affected by forest fragmentation. Our results also suggest that many species were associated with particular types of vegetation as measured by structural attributes of the forests. The abundances of 6 of the 73 species observed in our study were strongly correlated. These species included large birds (American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)) that forage on the ground in open habitats and small birds (Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus), House Wren (Troglodytes aedon), Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina), and Prairie Warbler (Setophaga discolor)) that are associated with dense shrub cover. Species abundances were positively correlated within each size group and negatively correlated between groups. Except for the American Crow, which preys on eggs and nestlings of small song birds, none of the other 5 species is known to display direct interactions, so we suspect that the correlations may have been associated with species-specific responses to habitat components not adequately measured by our covariates.

Deciduous forests have been remarkably resilient throughout their history, recovering from major shifts in climate and surviving periods of massive deforestation. But today the world’s great forests confront more ominous threats than ever before. This visionary book is the first to examine forests consisting of oaks, maples, hickories, beeches, chestnuts, birches and ecologically similar animals and plants on three continents—East Asia, Europe, and North America—to reveal their common origin back in time, the ecological patterns they share, and the approaches to conservation that have been attempted on their behalf. Although these forests face common problems, threats due to human activities vary. Different land use and agricultural practices on the three continents, as well as different attitudes about what is worth preserving, have led to strikingly different approaches to forest conservation. Robert Askins explores the strengths and weaknesses of conservation efforts across the continents and concludes that the ideal strategy for the future will blend the best ideas from each.

Deciduous forests have been remarkably resilient throughout their history, recovering from major shifts in climate and surviving periods of massive deforestation. But today the world's great forests confront more ominous threats than ever before. This visionary book is the first to examine forests consisting of oaks, maples, hickories, beeches, chestnuts, birches and ecologically similar animals and plants on three continents--East Asia, Europe, and North America--to reveal their common origin back in time, the ecological patterns they share, and the approaches to conservation that have been attempted on their behalf. Although these forests face common problems, threats due to human activities vary. Different land use and agricultural practices on the three continents, as well as different attitudes about what is worth preserving, have led to strikingly different approaches to forest conservation. Robert Askins explores the strengths and weaknesses of conservation efforts across the continents and concludes that the ideal strategy for the future will blend the best ideas from each.

Powerline rights-of-way (ROWs) often provide habitat for early successional bird species that have suffered long-term population declines in eastern North America. To determine how the abundance of shrubland birds varies with habitat within ROW corridors and with land use patterns surrounding corridors, we ran Poisson regression models on data from 93 plots on ROWs and compared regression coefficients. We also determined nest success rates on a 1-km stretch of ROW. Seven species of shrubland birds were common in powerline corridors. However, the nest success rates for prairie warbler (Dendroica discolor) and field sparrow (Spizella pusilla) were <21%, which is too low to compensate for estimated annual mortality. Some shrubland bird species were more abundant on narrower ROWs or at sites with lower vegetation or particular types of vegetation, indicating that vegetation management could be refined to favor species of high conservation priority. Also, several species were more abundant in ROWs traversing unfragmented forest than those near residential areas or farmland, indicating that corridors in heavily forested regions may provide better habitat for these species. In the area where we monitored nests, brood parasitism by brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) occurred more frequently close to a residential area. Although ROWs support dense populations of shrubland birds, those in more heavily developed landscapes may constitute sink habitat. ROWs in extensive forests may contribute more to sustaining populations of early successional birds, and thus may be the best targets for habitat management.

Traditional approaches to wildlife management often focused on boosting populations of a few target species, and general ecosystem processes were not always taken into account. The importance of understanding the role of ecosystem processes is illustrated by examples from grassland bird conservation. An understanding of natural disturbances and ecological drivers is crucially important for understanding how to manage habitats for particular species of grassland birds. This approach is effective for both game and nongame species, and for preserving general biodiversity in a wide range of grassland ecosystems (shortgrass prairie, desert grassland, coastal grassland, and wet meadows). To apply this approach successfully, wildlife managers must use adaptive management to restore or simulate natural ecosystem processes. This requires thinking like an ecologist, and not like a civil engineer who is molding the environment according to a set of standard specifications or highly prescribed plans.

Competition theory predicts that local communities should consist of species that are more dissimilar than expected by chance. We find a strikingly different pattern in a multicontinent data set (55 presence-absence matrices from 24 locations) on the composition of mixed-species bird flocks, which are important subunits of local bird communities the world over. By using null models and randomization tests followed by meta-analysis, we find the association strengths of species in flocks to be strongly related to similarity in body size and foraging behavior and higher for congeneric compared with noncongeneric species pairs. Given the local spatial scales of our individual analyses, differences in the habitat preferences of species are unlikely to have caused these association patterns; the patterns observed are most likely the outcome of species interactions. Extending group-living and social-information-use theory to a heterospecific context, we discuss potential behavioral mechanisms that lead to positive interactions among similar species in flocks, as well as ways in which competition costs are reduced. Our findings highlight the need to consider positive interactions along with competition when seeking to explain community assembly.

— 690 — The Auk, Vol. 127, Number 3, pages 690−695. ISSN 0004-8038, electronic ISSN 1938-4254.  2010 by The American Ornithologists’ Union. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals. com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/auk.2010.09199 Kevin WinKer,1,8 J. Michael reed,2 Patricia escalante,3 robert a. asKins,4 carla cicero,5 Gerald e. houGh,6 and John bates7

The Auk, Vol. , Number , pages  . ISSN -, electronic ISSN -.  by The American Ornithologists’ Union. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals. com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: ./auk.. The review process is essential to the maintenance of high scientific standards in a journal. The efforts of individual reviewers are remarkable, and we take this opportunity to acknowledge publicly those who contributed reviews during the period that Volume  was in preparation (reviews completed between  July  and  June ). Individuals who reviewed two or more manuscripts are signified by an asterisk. We also acknowledge the hard work of the Associate Editors, listed on the inside of the front cover of The Auk, whose impartial assessments of the manuscripts and the reviewers’ comments provided the basis for their recommendations to the Editor. Memorials and book reviews were solicited and managed by Alan H. Brush and R. Todd Engstrom, respectively. David A. Aborn, Josh Adams, David Ainley*, José Luis Alcantara, Cameron L. Aldridge, Mathew W. Alldredge*, Douglas Altshuler, Marina Anciaes, Angela D. Anders, David E. Andersen, Tycho Anker-Nilssen, José M. Aparicio, Peter Arcese, Todd W. Arnold, Beatriz Arroyo, Robert A. Askins*, Ian Ausprey, Suzanne H. Austin, Jesús M. Avilés, Alexander Badyaev, Shannon S. Badzinski*, Vittorio Baglione, Patricia Baird, Franz Bairlein, Allan J. Baker, Myron C. Baker, Lisa T. Balance, Bart Ballard, Barbara Ballentine, Thorsten J. S. Balsby, G. Thomas Bancroft, Jonathan Banks, F. Keith Barker, John M. Bates, Ulf Bauchinger, Greg S. Baxter, Erin M. Bayne, Benjamin H. Becker, Doug Bell, Douglas F. Bertram*, Keith L. Bildstein*, Jeffrey M. Black*, Peter Blancher, Guillermo Blanco, Jacques Blondel, Clint W. Boal, Carl E. Bock*, Giuseppe Bogliani, Douglas Bolger, Eric K. Bollinger*, Kimberly S. Bostwick*, Carlos A. Botero, Rauri C. Bowie, Reed Bowman, Michael J. Braun, Leonard A. Brennan, Andre R. Breton, Gwenda L. Brewer, David R. Brown*, M. Ralph Browning, Alan H. Brush, Pawel Brzek, Stephen T. Buckland, Theresa M. Burg, Alan E. Burger*, Kevin J. Burns, Edward H. Burtt, Jr.*, Jan Ove Bustnes, Luke K. Butler, Bruce E. Byers*, G. Vernon Byrd, Carlos Daniel Cadena, Renato Caparroz, Michael D. Carey, Matthew Carling, Matthew T. Carrano, Phillip Cassey, Anna Chalfoun, Nikita Chernetsov, Zachary A. Cheviron*, Johanna Choo, Andrew Cockburn*, Emily B. Cohen*, Brian T. Collins, Sarah Converse, Courtney J. Conway, Evan Cooch, Caren B. Cooper, Robert Cooper, Joel L. Cracraft, Daniel A. Cristol, Timothy M. Crowe, James Dale, Peter Dann, Stephen K. Davis*, Peter De Knijff, André Desrochers, Jean-Michel DeVink, Kenneth P. Dial, Duane R. Diefenbach, Robert Diehl, Stephen J. Dinsmore, Paul F. Doherty, Jr.*, Amy C. Dolan, Jose A. Donazar, Therese M. Donovan, Stephanie M. Doucet, Victoria J. Dreitz, Mark C. Drever, Kevin W. Dufour, Erica H. Dunn, Peter O. Dunn, Renata Duraes, Emily H. DuVal, Gareth J. Dyke, John McA. Eadie, William R. Eddleman, Scott V. Edwards, Hugh I. Ellis, Robert W. Elner, Chris S. Elphick, Craig R. Ely*, Andrzej Elzanowski, Steven D. Emslie, R. Michael Erwin*, Daniel Esler, Matthew A. Etterson, Randall Eubank, William R. Evans, David C. Evers, Daphne J. Fairbairn, Andrew Farnsworth, Bradley C. Fedy, Gustavo J. Fernandez, Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, Miguel Ferrer*, Jordi Figuerola*, Karen N. Fischer, Ryan J. Fisher, Jon Fjeldså*, P. A. (Trish) Fleming, Robert J. Fletcher, Paul L. Flint, Travis H. Folk, Scott Forbes, Anna M. Forsman, Francois Fournier, Thord Fransson, James D. Fraser, Peter C. Frederick*, Victoria L. Friesen, Adam Fudickar, Robert W. Furness, Karen Gaines, Lenny Gannes, Dany Garant*, Jaime Garcia-Moreno, Sidney A. Gauthreaux, Jr.*, Daniel D. Gibson, Robert M. Gibson, Sharon A. Gill, Jean-Francois Giroux, Barbara Glassey, Andrew G. Gosler, Patricia A. Gowaty, Catherine Graham, Cheri L. Gratto-Trevor, Brian R. Gray, Russell S. Greenberg, Jon S. Greenlaw, Tomas Grim*, Joseph A. Grzybowski, Carola A. Haas, Christian A. Hagen, Steffen Hahn, Daniel Hanley, Ian Hartley, Bradley Hartman Bakken, Scott A. Hatch, David A. Haukos, Kirsten R. Hazler, Julie A. Heath*, Percy N. Hébert, Dennis M. Heisey, Shandelle M. Henson, Fritz Hertel*, James E. Hines, Keith A. Hobson, David Hof, Christopher Hofmann, William L. Hohman, Rebecca L. Holberton, Dominique G. Homberger, Jeffrey P. Hoover, Richard L. Hutto, Lawrence D. Igl*, Darren E. Irwin*, Kamal Islam, Morton L. Isler, Jerome A. Jackson, Fabian M. Jaksic*, Andrew B. Johnson, Kevin P. Johnson, Kristine Johnson, L. Scott Johnson*, Matthew Johnson*, Oscar W. Johnson, Todd E. Katzner*, Jeffrey F. Kelly, Eric L. Kershner, A. Marm Kilpatrick, Daniel H. Kim*, David King, Drew King, Kirk C. Klasing, Patrick M. Kleeman, Anna H. Koetz, Mathias Kölliker, David N. Koons*, Nicola Koper, Ken Kraaijeveld, Donald E. Kroodsma, Meade Krosby, Oliver Kruger, James A. Kushlan, David C. Lahti, Marcel M. Lambrechts, Michael A. Larson, John Lazarus, Matthieu Le Corre, M. Ross Lein, Christopher A. Lepczyk, Matthias Leu, Douglas J. Levey*, Shou-Hsien Li, William Link, Mark Liu, John D. Lloyd, Penn Lloyd, Michael P. Lombardo, Jason D. Luscier*, Scott Macdougall-Shackleton, Bettina Mahler, Lisa Mahon, Mark Mallory*, Nigel Mann, Jeffrey S. Marks, Peter P. Marra, Carl D. Marti, Kathy Martin, Larry D. Martin, Juan G. Martínez, Carlos Martínez del Rio, John M. Marzluff, Kevin G. McCracken*, Kevin J. McGowan, Gary D. Miller, Matthew J. Miller, Rhonda Millikin, Anders P. Møller*, Pat Monaghan, Robert D. Montgomerie, Frank R. Moore, Julie Morand-Ferron, Juan Moreno, Yoshihisa Mori, Sara R. Morris, Michael L. Morrison, Dana Moseley*, Michael T. Murphy, Troy G. Murphy, Ruedi Nager, Douglas A. Nelson, James D. Nichols, Ryan M. Nielson, Neal D. Niemuth, Erica Nol*, Paul Reviewers for The Auk 2009

Carlson, Douglas. 2007. Roger Tory Peterson: a biography. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. xi + 296 p. $24.95, ISBN: 978‐0‐292‐71680‐3 (alk. paper).