Equitable Chick Survival in Three Species of the Non-Migratory Shorebird Despite Species-Specific Sexual Dimorphism of the Young.

Sex-biases in populations can have important implications for species' social biology, population demography and mating systems. It has recently been suggested that in some shorebirds, sex-specific bias in survival of precocial young may occur. This may be driven by variation in the brood sex-ratio and/or the sexual size dimorphism of young birds, which may influence predator escape capacity.

Human residential status and habitat quality affect the likelihood but not the success of lapwing breeding in an urban matrix.

Wildlife living in the suburbs faces the challenge of dealing with human presence and yard management (including the occurrence of pets) which vary at the scale of the house block. This study examined the influence of ecological factors (e.g.

The bright incubate at night: sexual dichromatism and adaptive incubation division in an open-nesting shorebird.

Ornamentation of parents poses a high risk for offspring because it reduces cryptic nest defence. Over a century ago, Wallace proposed that sexual dichromatism enhances crypsis of open-nesting females although subsequent studies found that dichromatism per se is not necessarily adaptive. We tested whether reduced female ornamentation in a sexually dichromatic species reduces the risk of clutch depredation and leads to adaptive parental roles in the red-capped plover Charadrius ruficapillus, a species with biparental incubation.

Stakeholder Perceptions of Threatened Species and Their Management on Urban Beaches.

We surveyed 579 recreationists regarding management of the threatened, beach-dwelling Hooded Plover Thinornis rubricollis. We postulated that: (1) lower awareness of the species and higher 'inconvenience' of management would engender less favourable perceptions of conservation and management; and (2) that frequency of beach use and dog ownership may mediate perceptions and levels of awareness and inconvenience. Overall, inconvenience was low while awareness and support for plover conservation were high.

Swooping in the Suburbs; Parental Defence of an Abundant Aggressive Urban Bird against Humans.

Masked Lapwings, Vanellus miles, often come into 'conflict' with humans, because they often breed in close proximity to humans and actively defend their ground nests through aggressive behaviour, which typically involves swooping. This study examined whether defensive responses differed when nesting birds were confronted with different human stimuli ('pedestrian alone' vs. 'person pushing a lawn mower' approaches to nests) and tested the effectiveness of a commonly used deterrent (mock eyes positioned on the top or back of a person's head) on the defensive response.