Robust analysis of diel activity patterns.

Research Highlight: Iannarilli, F., Gerber, B. D.

Environmental constraints can explain clutch size differences between urban and forest blue tits: Insights from an egg removal experiment.

Urban environments present novel ecological challenges to wild species. In birds, urban populations generally exhibit reduced clutch sizes compared to forest populations. However, whether smaller urban clutches are adaptive or a result of environmental constraints is unclear.

The impact of urbanization on health depends on the health metric, life stage and level of urbanization: a global meta-analysis on avian species.

Stressors associated with urban habitats have been linked to poor wildlife health but whether a general negative relationship between urbanization and animal health can be affirmed is unclear. We conducted a meta-analysis of avian literature to test whether health biomarkers differed on average between urban and non-urban environments, and whether there are systematic differences across species, biomarkers, life stages and species traits. Our dataset included 644 effect sizes derived from 112 articles published between 1989 and 2022, on 51 bird species.

Investigating the impacts of artificial light via blackouts.

Natural experiments provide remarkable opportunities to test the large-scale effects of human activities. Widespread energy blackouts offer such an 'experiment' to test the impacts of artificial light at night (ALAN) on wildlife. We use the situation in South Africa, where regular scheduled blackouts are being implemented, to highlight this opportunity.

Part-night exposure to artificial light at night has more detrimental effects on aphid colonies than fully lit nights.

Artificial light at night (ALAN) threatens natural ecosystems globally. While ALAN research is increasing, little is known about how ALAN affects plants and interactions with other organisms. We explored the effects of ALAN on plant defence and plant-insect interactions using barley () and the English grain aphid ().