Dataset of first appearances of the scholarly bibliographic references on Wikipedia articles.

Referencing scholarly documents as information sources on Wikipedia is important because it supports or improves the quality of Wikipedia content. Several studies have been conducted regarding scholarly references on Wikipedia; however, little is known of the editors and their edits contributing to add the scholarly references on Wikipedia. In this study, we develop a methodology to detect the oldest scholarly reference added to Wikipedia articles by which a certain paper is uniquely identifiable as the "first appearance of the scholarly reference.

The influence of climatic variation and density on the survival of an insular passerine Zosterops lateralis.

Understanding the influence of environmental factors on population dynamics is fundamental to many areas in biology. Survival is a key factor of population biology, as it is thought to be the predominant driver of growth in long-lived passerines, which can be influenced by both biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. We used mark-recapture methods and generalized linear mixed models to test the influence of density and climatic variation, measured at a regional and local scale (Southern Oscillation Index [SOI] and rainfall, respectively), on seasonal variation in survival rates of an insular population of Silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis chlorocephalus), during a 15-year study period, off the east coast of Australia.

Individual heterogeneity and senescence in silvereyes on Heron Island.

Individual heterogeneity and correlations between life history traits play a fundamental role in life history evolution and population dynamics. Unobserved individual heterogeneity in survival can be a nuisance for estimation of age effects at the individual level by causing bias due to mortality selection. We jointly analyze survival and breeding output from successful breeding attempts in an island population of Silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis chlorocephalus) by fitting models that incorporate age effects and individual heterogeneity via random effects.

4000 years of phenotypic change in an island bird: heterogeneity of selection over three microevolutionary timescales.

Pronounced phenotypic shifts in island populations are typically attributed to natural selection, but reconstructing heterogeneity in long-term selective regimes remains a challenge. We examined a scenario of divergence proposed for species colonizing a new environment, involving directional selection with a rapid shift to a new optimum and subsequent stabilization. We provide some of the first empirical evidence for this model of evolution using morphological data from three timescales in an island bird, Zosterops lateralis chlorocephalus.

Morphological shifts in island-dwelling birds: the roles of generalist foraging and niche expansion.

Passerine birds living on islands are usually larger than their mainland counterparts, in terms of both body size and bill size. One explanation for this island rule is that shifts in morphology are an adaptation to facilitate ecological niche expansion. In insular passerines, for instance, increased bill size may facilitate generalist foraging because it allows access to a broader range of feeding niches.

Microevolution in island forms: the roles of drift and directional selection in morphological divergence of a passerine bird.

Theory predicts that in small isolated populations random genetic drift can lead to phenotypic divergence; however this prediction has rarely been tested quantitatively in natural populations. Here we utilize natural repeated island colonization events by members of the avian species complex, Zosterops lateralis, to assess whether or not genetic drift alone is an adequate explanation for the observed patterns of microevolutionary divergence in morphology. Morphological and molecular genetic characteristics of island and mainland populations are compared to test three predictions of drift theory: (1) that the pattern of morphological change is idiosyncratic to each island; (2) that there is concordance between morphological and neutral genetic shifts across island populations; and (3) for populations whose time of colonization is known, that the rate of morphological change is sufficiently slow to be accounted for solely by genetic drift.

Genetic consequences of sequential founder events by an island-colonizing bird.

The importance of founder events in promoting evolutionary changes on islands has been a subject of long-running controversy. Resolution of this debate has been hindered by a lack of empirical evidence from naturally founded island populations. Here we undertake a genetic analysis of a series of historically documented, natural colonization events by the silvereye species-complex (Zosterops lateralis), a group used to illustrate the process of island colonization in the original founder effect model.