Home range size and habitat selection of owned outdoor domestic cats () in urban southwestern Ontario.

Domestic cats () play a dual role in society as both companion animals and predators. When provided with unsupervised outdoor access, cats can negatively impact native wildlife and create public health and animal welfare challenges. The effective implementation of management strategies, such as buffer zones or curfews, requires an understanding of home range size, the factors that influence their movement, and the types of habitats they use.

Integrating data types to estimate spatial patterns of avian migration across the Western Hemisphere.

For many avian species, spatial migration patterns remain largely undescribed, especially across hemispheric extents. Recent advancements in tracking technologies and high-resolution species distribution models (i.e.

Inaccurate and Biased Global Media Coverage Underlies Public Misunderstanding of Shark Conservation Threats and Solutions.

Sharks are a taxon of significant conservation concern and associated public interest. The scientific community largely supports management policies focusing on sustainable fisheries exploitation of sharks, but many concerned members of the public and some environmental advocates believe that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist and therefore support total bans on all shark fisheries and/or trade in shark products. The belief that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist persists despite scientific evidence showing that they can and do, and are important to livelihoods.

Testing predictions of inclusive fitness theory in inbreeding relatives with biparental care.

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that parental care will vary with relatedness between potentially caring parents and offspring, potentially shaping mating system evolution. Systems with extra-pair paternity (EPP), and hence variable parent-brood relatedness, provide valuable opportunities to test this prediction. However, existing theoretical and empirical studies assume that a focal male is either an offspring's father with no inbreeding, or is completely unrelated.

A range-wide domino effect and resetting of the annual cycle in a migratory songbird.

Latitudinal differences in timing of breeding are well documented but how such differences carry over to influence timing of events in the annual cycle of migratory birds is not well understood. We examined geographical variation in timing of events throughout the year using light-level geolocator tracking data from 133 migratory tree swallows ( Tachycineta bicolor) originating from 12 North American breeding populations. A swallow's breeding latitude influenced timing of breeding, which then carried over to affect breeding ground departure.

Males migrate farther than females in a differential migrant: an examination of the fasting endurance hypothesis.

Patterns of migration including connectivity between breeding and non-breeding populations and intraspecific variation in the distance travelled are important to study because they can affect individual fitness and population dynamics. Using data from 182 band recoveries across North America and 17 light-level geolocators, we examined the migration patterns of the northern flicker (Colaptes auratus), a migratory woodpecker. This species is unusual among birds because males invest more in parental care than females.

Determinants of parental care and offspring survival during the post-fledging period: males care more in a species with partially reversed sex roles.

Sexual conflict is magnified during the post-fledging period of birds when the sexes face different trade-offs between continuing parental care or investing in self maintenance or other mating opportunities. Species with reversed sex roles provide a unique opportunity to study the relationship between mating systems and investment in parental care. Here, we provide the first detailed study of the length of care by males versus females (n = 24 pairs) during the post-fledging period, assessing factors that may promote care within and between the sexes.

Corticosterone stress response and plasma metabolite levels during breeding and molt in a free-living migratory songbird, the wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina).

Many birds face energetic trade-offs between different life history stages, such as reproductive effort, feather molt and the non-breeding period. Little is known about how physiological measures of condition (corticosterone, plasma metabolites) in free-living birds change from nesting stages to the post-breeding molt period or whether this is influenced by prior reproductive effort. We evaluated whether corticosterone (CORT) and plasma metabolite levels vary with date, nest stage and sex in a free-living migratory songbird, the wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina).

Effects of post-breeding moult and energetic condition on timing of songbird migration into the tropics.

Each autumn billions of songbirds migrate between the temperate zone and tropics, but little is known about how events on the breeding grounds affect migration to the tropics. Here, we use light level geolocators to track the autumn migration of wood thrushes Hylocichla mustelina and test for the first time if late moult and poor physiological condition prior to migration delays arrival on the winter territory. Late nesting thrushes postponed feather moult, and birds with less advanced moult in August were significantly farther north on 10 October while en route to the tropics.