sources of mortality for birds, caused by humans

A new paper on sources of mortality for birds, caused by humans:

Direct Mortality of Birds from Anthropogenic Causes, to be published soon in: Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics

Review in Advance first posted online on September 10, 2015.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-112414-054133

by Scott R. Loss,Tom Will, and Peter P. Marra

 

ABSTRACT:

Understanding and reversing the widespread population declines of birds require estimating the magnitude of all mortality sources. Numerous anthropogenic mortality sources directly kill birds. Cause-specific annual mortality in the United States varies from billions (cat predation) to hundreds of millions (building and automobile collisions), tens of millions (power line collisions), millions (power line electrocutions, communication tower collisions), and hundreds of thousands (wind turbine collisions). However, great uncertainty exists about the independent and cumulative impacts of this mortality on avian populations. To facilitate this understanding, additional research is needed to estimate mortality for individual bird species and affected populations, to sample mortality throughout the annual cycle to inform full life-cycle population models, and to develop models that clarify the degree to which multiple mortality sources are additive or compensatory. We review sources of direct anthropogenic mortality in relation to the fundamental ecological objective of disentangling how mortality sources affect animal populations.

Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics Volume 46 is November 23, 2015. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.