Urban expansion alters animal communities through habitat fragmentation, environmental filtering and functional homogenisation. Understanding how urban habitats shape species assemblages is essential for urban planning that balances development with biodiversity conservation. We analysed the breeding bird community in Pamplona, northern Spain, a Mediterranean city that has experienced 40% population growth over the last five d...

The Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch is the rarest forest passerine in the western Palaearctic with a population reduced to a single locality, Inagua, in the west of the island. After a forest fire, some birds were established in another location and a reinforcement programme was launched with the aim of consolidating this new population. Between 2010 and 2019, 194 Blue Chaffinches were released in the pine forest of La Cumbre, in...

Aim While the contribution of abiotic factors to species distribution is well known, the geographic structure, if any, of biotic interactions within the species range is poorly understood. Most studies neglect biotic interactions when generating Species Distribution Models (SDMs) and projecting them, using future climatic scenarios, while others argue that biotic interactions may extend species tolerances to suboptimal abiotic...

Aim To explore the determinants of island occupancy of 48 terrestrial bird species in an oceanic archipelago, accounting for ecological components while controlling for phylogenetic effects. Location The seven main islands of the Canary archipelago. Methods We obtained field data on population density, habitat breadth and landscape distribution in Tenerife, Fuerteventura and La Palma, aiming to sample all available habitats an...

Aim Animal monitoring programmes have allowed analyses of population trends, most of which now comment on the possible effect of global climate change. However, the relationship between the interspecific variation in population trends and species traits, such as habitat preferences, niche breadth or distribution patterns, has received little attention, in spite of its usefulness in the construction of ecological generalization...