Population Biology Commons^™

European Starlings, H. Jeffrey Homan, Ron J. Johnson, James R. Thiele, George M. Linz

Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series

European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris, Figure 1) are an invasive species in the United States. The first recorded release of the birds was in 1890 in New York City’s Central Park. Because starlings easily adapt to a variety of habitats, nest sites and food sources, the birds spread quickly across the country. Today, there are about 150 million starlings in North America. Conflicts between people and starlings occur mostly in agricultural settings. Conflicts can occur during winter in urban and suburban environments, especially in business districts.

Starlings damage apples, blueberries, cherries, figs, grapes, peaches, and strawberries. Besides causing direct losses from …

Biotic And Abiotic Factors Predicting The Global Distribution And Population Density Of An Invasive Large Mammal, Jesse S. Lewis, Mathew L. Farnsworth, Christopher L. Burdett, David M. Theobald, Miranda Gray, Ryan S. Miller

Other Publications in Wildlife Management

Biotic and abiotic factors are increasingly acknowledged to synergistically shape broad-scale species distributions. However, the relative importance of biotic and abiotic factors in predicting species distributions is unclear. In particular, biotic factors, such as predation and vegetation, including those resulting from anthropogenic land-use change, are underrepresented in species distribution modeling, but could improve model predictions. Using generalized linear models and model selection techniques, we used 129 estimates of population density of wild pigs (Sus scrofa) from 5 continents to evaluate the relative importance, magnitude, and direction of biotic and abiotic factors in predicting population density of an invasive large mammal …