四川省猛禽多样性及迁徙路线

基于文献、标本馆数据和野外调查记录, 共收集四川省猛禽分布记录数据2,410条, 依此分析了四川省猛禽的分布与迁徙路线。四川省猛禽记录有56种(76种及亚种), 其中隼形目3科41种, 占全国隼形目鸟类总数的64.06%; 鸮形目2科15种, 占全国鸮形目鸟类总数的48.39%; 国家I级重点保护猛禽5种。四川省猛禽总体呈现西部多东部少的格局, 记录最多的平武县有32种; 在垂直分布上以1,000-3,500 m海拔段物种丰富度最高。在四川省境内具有迁徙习性的猛禽有19种, 其中金堂县迁徙猛禽最多。主要迁移路线有3条: 1条属于中亚-印度迁徙路线, 经过四川省西北角的石渠和德格县; 另外2条属东亚-澳大利亚迁徙路线, 其中1条沿四川省盆地西缘的岷山-邛崃山-凉山一线向南到我国云南、缅甸; 另外1条沿四川北部岷山至金堂和南充一线向东南至重庆、贵州。本研究为保护四川猛禽资源和了解猛禽迁徙路线提供了参考。     

Not just passengers: pigeons,Columba livia,can learn homing routes while flying with a more experienced conspecific

For animals that travel in groups, the directional choices of conspecifics are potentially a rich source of information for spatial learning. In this study, we investigate how the opportunity to follow a locally experienced demonstrator affects route learning by pigeons over repeated homing flights. This test of social influences on navigation takes advantage of the individually distinctive routes that pigeons establish when trained alone. We found that pigeons learn routes just as effectively while flying with a partner as control pigeons do while flying alone. However, rather than learning the exact route of the demonstrator, the paired routes shifted over repeated flights, which suggests that the birds with less local experience also took an active role in the navigational task. The efficiency of the original routes was a key factor in how far they shifted, with less efficient routes undergoing the greatest changes. In this context, inefficient routes are unlikely to be maintained through repeated rounds of social transmission, and instead more efficient routes are achieved because of the interaction between social learning and information pooling.     

Isolation and characterization of 17 polymorphic microsatellite loci for the three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus)

We describe primers and polymerase chain reaction conditions to amplify 17 di‐, tri‐ and tetranucleotide microsatellite loci from the three‐toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus). The primers were tested on 26 to 30 individuals from a single population breeding in southern Finland. The developed primer pairs yielded an average of 7.6 alleles per locus (range two to 15), an average observed heterozygosity of 0.69 (range 0.07 to 0.97), and an average polymorphic information content of 0.68 (range 0.06 to 0.90).     

Interspecific social networks promote information transmission in wild songbirds

Understanding the functional links between social structure and population processes is a central aim of evolutionary ecology. Multiple types of interactions can be represented by networks drawn for the same population, such as kinship, dominance or affiliative networks, but the relative importance of alternative networks in modulating population processes may not be clear. We illustrate this problem, and a solution, by developing a framework for testing the importance of different types of association in facilitating the transmission of information. We apply this framework to experimental data from wild songbirds that form mixed-species flocks, recording the arrival (patch discovery) of individuals to novel foraging sites. We tested whether intraspecific and interspecific social networks predicted the spread of information about novel food sites, and found that both contributed to transmission. The likelihood of acquiring information per unit of connection to knowledgeable individuals increased 22-fold for conspecifics, and 12-fold for heterospecifics. We also found that species varied in how much information they produced, suggesting that some species play a keystone role in winter foraging flocks. More generally, these analyses demonstrate that this method provides a powerful approach, using social networks to quantify the relative transmission rates across different social relationships.