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Urban Habitats Impact The Song And Reproductive Success Of A Migratory Bird, The Gray Catbird (Dumetella Carolinensis), Sasha Ewing

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Urban environments are relatively recent on an evolutionary timescale, and, as such, they create novel selection pressures that may influence fitness and mate choice. Many ecologically significant factors change with increasing levels of urbanization, such as increasing anthropogenic noise, increasing impervious surface, and decreasing forest cover. There is growing empirical evidence that anthropogenic noise affects features of birdsong and, separately, that avian nesting success varies across an urban gradient, but rarely do studies examine both – a necessary step to elucidate the evolutionary potential of these novel pressures. I investigated song features, body morphometrics, and reproductive success in male gray …