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Full-Text Articles in Population Biology
Familiarity With Breeding Habitat Improves Daily Survival In Colonial Cliff Swallows, Charles R. Brown, Mary Bomberger Brown, Kathleen R. Brazeal
Familiarity With Breeding Habitat Improves Daily Survival In Colonial Cliff Swallows, Charles R. Brown, Mary Bomberger Brown, Kathleen R. Brazeal
School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications
One probable cost of dispersing to a new breeding habitat is unfamiliarity with local conditions such as the whereabouts of food or the habits of local predators, and consequently immigrants may have lower probabilities of survival than more experienced residents. Within a breeding season, estimated daily survival probabilities of cliff swallows, Petrochelidon pyrrhonota, at colonies in southwestern Nebraska, USA, were highest for birds that had always nested at the same site, followed by those for birds that had nested there in some (but not all) past years. Daily survival probabilities were lowest for birds that were naive immigrants to …
Bird Movement Predicts Buggy Creek Virus Infection In Insect Vectors, Charles R. Brown, Mary Bomberger Brown, Amy T. Moore, Nicholas Komar
Bird Movement Predicts Buggy Creek Virus Infection In Insect Vectors, Charles R. Brown, Mary Bomberger Brown, Amy T. Moore, Nicholas Komar
School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications
Predicting the spatial foci of zoonotic diseases is a major challenge for epidemiologists and disease ecologists. Migratory birds are often thought to be responsible for introducing some aviozoonotic pathogens such as West Nile and avian influenza viruses to a local area, but most information on how bird movement correlates with virus prevalence is anecdotal or indirect. We report that the prevalence of Buggy Creek virus (BCRV) infection in cimicid swallow bugs (Oeciacus vicarius), the principal invertebrate vector for this virus, was directly associated with the likelihood of movement by cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), an amplifying host …