Our recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows how birds avoid their sibling-species competitors.

Photo: Cezary Korkosz

We used data on abundance of two closely related passerine species, the Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) and the Thrush Nightingale (Luscinia luscinia), collected across their syntopy, allotopy and allopatry. We found that interspecific competition gave marked imprints on patterns in habitat preferences of these two species. Whereas they preferred the same habitats in allopatry, their preferences became strikingly different in allotopy within sympatry where the abundance of the Common Nightingale increased towards dry and warm sites with low coverage of pastures, while the abundance of the Thrush Nightingale showed exactly opposite trends. It seems that both species “escape” from competition to allotopic sites covered by habitats avoided by the competitor. Therefore, we argue that the interspecific competition is an important driver of species’ distribution and habitat preference is variable across space and depends on the context created by biotic interactions.

The study was done in cooperation with the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Bird data were collected by skilled volunteers within the Common Breeding Bird Survey in Poland.

More info:

https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12808

https://journalofanimalecology.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/how-do-birds-avoid-their-sibling-species-competitors/

Article written by Alicja Laska, Lechosław Kuczyński and Anna Skoracka from our team in collaboration with Brian Rector from GBRR, USDA-ARS, was published in the latest issue of Experimental and Applied Acarology.

In this study, we showed that protogyne females of two Abacarus species had a larger overall body size in winter than in either spring or summer. The results are consistent with our hypothesis that mites of these species, for which deutogyny has not been observed, undergo physiological changes such as accumulation of nutritional reserves, that enable them to withstand adverse environmental conditions.

The full article available here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10493-017-0159-1

Recent Ecology paper co-authored by Jakub Szymkowiak from Pop Ecol Lab on system-specific roles of weather and pollination dynamics in driving seed production in European trees is now available online!

Using a 19-year data set from three sites in Poland, the authors investigated the relationship between weather, airborn pollen, and seed production in two oak species (Quercus petraea and Q. robur) and beech (Fagus sylvatica). They found that for oaks and beech, the warm summers preceding flowering correlated with high pollen abundance and warm springs resulted in high flowering synchrony (short pollen seasons). However, in beech the best predictor of seed crops was pollen abundance, while large seed crops in oaks correlated with short pollen seasons. These findings suggest that fundamentally different proximate mechanisms may drive masting in oaks and beech.

You can read the paper here and on ResearchGate. Read also what Jakub Szymkowiak wrote about this study on his page.

## JSz