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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Shoko SugasawaORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.As humans increasingly modify the natural world, many animals have responded by changing their behaviour. Understanding and predicting the extent of these responses is a key step in conserving these species. For example, the tendency for some species of birds to incorporate anthropogenic items—particularly plastic material—into their nests is of increasing concern, as in some cases, this behaviour has harmful effects on adults, young and eggs. Studies of this phenomenon, however, have to date been largely limited in geographic and taxonomic scope. To investigate the global correlates of anthropogenic (including plastic) nest material use, we used Bayesian phylogenetic mixed models and a data set of recorded nest materials in 6147 species of birds. We find that, after controlling for research effort and proximity to human landscape modifications, anthropogenic nest material use is correlated with synanthropic (artificial) nesting locations, breeding environment and the number of different nest materials the species has been recorded to use. We also demonstrate that body mass, range size, conservation status and brain size do not explain variation in the recorded use of anthropogenic nest materials. These results indicate that anthropogenic materials are more likely to be included in nests when they are more readily available, as well as potentially by species that are more flexible in their nest material choice.
Author(s): Sheard C, Stott L, Street SE, Healy SD, Sugasawa S, Lala KN
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Animal Ecology
Year: 2024
Volume: 93
Issue: 6
Pages: 691-704
Print publication date: 01/06/2024
Online publication date: 25/03/2024
Acceptance date: 08/02/2024
Date deposited: 06/11/2024
ISSN (print): 0021-8790
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2656
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14078
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.14078
Data Access Statement: The data and code underlying this study can be found at https://doi. org/10.5281/zenodo.10719750 (Sheard et al., 2024)
PubMed id: 38525599
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