Avian Urban Ecology

As natural habitat continues to be lost and the world steadily becomes more urbanized, biologists are increasingly studying the effect this has on wildlife. Birds are particularly good model systems since their life history, behaviour, and physiology are especially influenced by directly measurable environmental factors such as light and sound pollution. It is therefore relatively easy to compare urban individuals and populations with their rural counterparts. This accessible text focuses on the behavioural and physiological mechanisms which facilitate adaptation and on the evolutionary process that ensues. It discusses topics such as acoustics, reproductive cues, disease, and artificial feeding, and includes a series of case studies illustrating cutting edge research on these areas.

Avian Urban Ecology is suitable for professional avian biologists and ornithologists as well as graduate students of avian ecology, evolution, and conservation. It will also be of relevance and use to a more general audience of urban ecologists and conservation biologists.

Diego Gil, Departamento de Ecologia Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales,Henrik Brumm, Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology, Communication and Social Behaviour Group

Diego Gil is a senior scientist at the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), and he is based at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid. His main interests are the study of bird song and the transmission of hormones in avian eggs. He combines an evolutionary ecology perspective with the study of the proximal physiological mechanisms that underpin evolutionary adaptations. He has published more than 50 research articles, and has been editor of Animal Behaviour.

Henrik Brumm heads a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany. He is a former Editor of Behaviour and an Editor of Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology In 2005, he was appointed as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin. He has been studying bird behaviour and ecology in many parts of the world and published over 50 articles and scientific papers.