Happy to breed in the city? Urban food resources limit reproductive output in Western Jackdaws.

ABSTRACT: Urban areas expand worldwide, transforming landscapes and creating new challenging habitats. Some bird species, mainly omnivorous feeding on human waste and cavity nesters, commonly breed in these habitats and are, therefore, regarded as urban-adapted. Although urban areas may provide new nesting sites and abundant human waste, the low breeding success found in some of these species suggests that the poor protein content in human waste might limit breeding parameters. We investigated whether the breeding success of a cavity nester and omnivorous species commonly breeding in urban areas, the Western Jackdaw (Corvus monedula), depended on the availability of good-quality non-urban food. We approached the objective by combining a literature review and experiments in the field. With the

SUBMITTER: Meyrier E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5330913 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature