Rural landscape dynamics over time and its consequences for habitat preference patterns of the grey partridge Perdix perdix.

Intensification of agricultural practices has drastically shaped farmland landscapes and generally caused a decline in spatial and temporal heterogeneity, thus leading to changes in habitat quality and food resources and a decline for most farmland birds Europe-wide. The relationship between complex landscape changes and habitat preferences of animals still remains poorly understood. Particularly, temporal and spatial changes in diversity may affect not only habitat choice but also population sizes.

Hematozoa in endemic subspecies of common kestrel in the Cape Verde Islands.

We examined 130 Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) representing two endemic subspecies and nine resident island populations on the Cape Verde archipelago between 1996 and 1999 to study diversity, prevalence, and intensity of hematozoa. Hematozoan diversity was very low; we detected only Plasmodium fallax, a species that is rarely found in Falconoformes, and, possibly, Haemoproteus brachiatus. Moreover, prevalence of Plasmodium fallax was low (1.