Birds in Spain and Morocco are having trouble hearing and copying each other's songs because of the way their habitat has been broken up, according to a study published yesterday.
As a result the birds are living in more isolated groups and only learning songs from their closest neighbors. The researchers believe that these changes in song patterns are an early warning of habitat fragmentation, which could lead to lower genetic diversity and inbred populations.
Paola Laiolo and Jose Tella, of the Estacion Biologica de Donana in Seville, recorded and analyzed the songs of a rare and specialized songbird called Dupont's lark, across 21 localities in Spain and Morocco. This lark has particular requirements and can only live in arid scrub steppe. By comparing song similarity between birds, the researchers could show that broken habitats made the male larks mimic their neighbors' songs more than expected, but lose touch with birds on the other side of the habitat break.
"Neighbors shared up to 70 percent of their phrases, while non-neighbors shared only around 30 percent," Laiolo said. By contrast birds living in pristine habitat shared around 45 percent of their phrases with non-neighbors over a similar distance.
The researchers believe that an increase in agricultural land, forest plantations and roads has fragmented the arid steppe habitat, preventing the Dupont's lark from sharing songs over greater distances.
"The fragmentation confines the species to smaller areas and eventually the genetic diversity of the population will erode," said Laiolo, whose results are reported in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Such findings are likely to apply to many kinds of wildlife in a variety of habitats and places. Creatures like insects and small mammals that tend to be less mobile than birds are likely to be hit hardest.
For many species in the UK it may already be too late.
"We have been immensely efficient at cutting the country into blocks in the UK," said Andre Farrar, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. "Now we are trying to stitch some of these blocks back together again, not only to improve genetic diversity of species, but also to moderate the impact of natural disasters like climate change."
Laiolo and Tella suggest that their song-matching technique could be used in other places to measure how fragmented a habitat has become.
However, Peter Salter, a birdsong expert at St Andrews University, said: "We would need to know what the songs are normally like before we can use it as a way of measuring fragmentation. Also, not all birds learn their songs from their neighbors."
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS