RIO Country Report 2017: Cyprus

The R&I Observatory country report 2017 provides a brief analysis of the R&I system covering the economic context, main actors, funding trends & human resources, policies to address R&I challenges, and R&I in national and regional smart specialisation strategies. Data is from Eurostat, unless otherwise referenced and is correct as at January 2018. Data used from other international sources is also correct to that date. The report provides a state-of-play and analysis of the national level R&I system and it's challenges, to support the European Semester.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

A whole-island census of the Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus breeding on Skomer Island in 2011.

Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire, Wales is believed to have one of the largest colonies of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus in the World. In 1998 a census was made of the whole island, and the adjacent islands of Skokholm and Middleholm, in order to try to establish the size of the breeding population; the Skomer population was estimated to be just over 101,000 breeding pairs. A second census was carried out in 2011. First, a set of study burrows was opened and a tape of the male call (normally only males respond to these) was played down each burrow several times during the course of incubation in order to establish the male response rate. Then the same tape was played down all the burrows in each of 288 randomly selected plots across the island and the number of responses recorded. Extrapolating responses from census plots to the whole island yielded an estimate of 125,112 (CI ± 16,445) responses. Adjusting this figure to take account of the response rate yielded an estimate of 316,070 (SE ± 41,767) breeding pairs. This figure is greatly in excess of the estimate made just 13 years earlier. Possible reasons for this are discussed

Antibody responses to avian influenza viruses in wild birds broaden with age

For viruses such as avian influenza, immunity within a host population can drive the emergence of new strains by selecting for viruses with novel antigens that avoid immune recognition. The accumulation of acquired immunity with age is hypothesized to affect how influenza viruses emerge and spread in species of different lifespans. Despite its importance for understanding the behaviour of avian influenza viruses, little is known about age-related accumulation of immunity in the virus's primary reservoir, wild birds. To address this, we studied the age structure of immune responses to avian influenza virus in a wild swan population (Cygnus olor), before and after the population experienced an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in 2008. We performed haemagglutination inhibition assays on sampled sera for five avian influenza strains and show that breadth of response accumulates with age. The observed age-related distribution of antibody responses to avian influenza strains may explain the age-dependent mortality observed during the highly pathogenic H5N1 outbreak. Age structures and species lifespan are probably important determinants of viral epidemiology and virulence in birds

Unhatched eggs represent the invisible fraction in two wild bird populations

Prenatal mortality is typically overlooked in population studies, which biases evolutionary inference by confounding selection and inheritance. Birds represent an opportunity to include this ‘invisible fraction’ if each egg contains a zygote, but whether hatching failure is caused by fertilization failure versus prenatal mortality is largely unknown. We quantified fertilization failure rates in two bird species that are popular systems for studying evolutionary dynamics and found that overwhelming majorities (99.9%) of laid eggs were fertilized. These systems thus present opportunities to eliminate the invisible fraction from life-history data

Sea buckthorn berries <i>Hippophae rhamnoides</i> L. predict size and composition of a great tit population <i>Parus major</i> L.

In seasonal environments variation in food abundance in the non-breeding season is thought to affect songbird population dynamics. In a unique tit-sea buckthorn berry system we can estimate the berry abundance and both the tit consumption and population dynamics. Six hundred nest boxes were available to great and blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus for breeding in spring and roosting in winter. We followed the dynamics including the recapture histories of individually marked great tits from 2008 to 2014. In each year we estimated 1) the winter sea buckthorn berry availability, 2) an index of berry consumption in December based on the colour of the faeces of roosting birds, 3) the number of breeding great and blue tits, 4) both recapture probability and the return rate of the great tits and 5) immigration rates. December berry abundance positively predicted the number of breeding pairs of both species in the subsequent season and great tit return rates in the second half of the winter. There was support for a sex specific berry effect on the adult return rate in the great tit: female return rate was associated less strongly to berry abundance than male return rate. This skewed the sex ratio of the local breeders in the following breeding season. Intriguingly, annual berry consumption in December was not related to berry abundance, and individuals consuming more berries tended to have slightly lower return rates. Reproductive rate was not related to berry abundance. There was hardly support for a relation between immigration rates of first year breeders and berry abundance. Taken together these results imply that berry stock not only affected population size but also the population composition through sex specific exchange with the surroundings. Since population density covaried with berry abundance, density dependent effects provide an alternative explanation for the patterns observed

A recipe for postfledging survival in great tits Parus major: be large and be early (but not too much)

Survival of juveniles during the postfledging period can be markedly low, which may have major consequences on avian population dynamics. Knowing which factors operating during the nesting phase affect postfledging survival is crucial to understand avian breeding strategies. We aimed to obtain a robust set of predictors of postfledging local survival using the great tit (Parus major) as a model species. We used mark–recapture models to analyze the effect of hatching date, temperatures experienced during the nestling period, fledging size and body mass on first-year postfledging survival probability of great tit juveniles. We used data from 5192 nestlings of first clutches ringed between 1993 and 2010. Mean first-year postfledging survival probability was 15.2%, and it was lower for smaller individuals, as well as for those born in either very early or late broods. Our results stress the importance of choosing an optimum hatching period, and raising large chicks to increase first-year local survival probability in the studied population.Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (Grant/Award Number: ‘CGL2013-48001-C2-1-P’)Peer reviewe

Demographic profiles and environmental drivers of variation relate to individual breeding state in a long-lived trans-oceanic migratory seabird, the Manx shearwater

Understanding the points in a species breeding cycle when they are most vulnerable to environmental fluctuations is key to understanding interannual demography and guiding effective conservation and management. Seabirds represent one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world, and climate change and severe weather is a prominent and increasing threat to this group. We used a multi-state capture-recapture model to examine how the demographic rates of a long-lived trans-oceanic migrant seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus, are influenced by environmental conditions experienced at different stages of the annual breeding cycle and whether these relationships vary with an individual's breeding state in the previous year (i.e., successful breeder, failed breeder and non-breeder). Our results imply that populations of Manx shearwaters are comprised of individuals with different demographic profiles, whereby more successful reproduction is associated with higher rates of survival and breeding propensity. However, we found that all birds experienced the same negative relationship between rates of survival and wind force during the breeding season, indicating a cost of reproduction (or central place constraint for non-breeders) during years with severe weather conditions. We also found that environmental effects differentially influence the breeding propensity of individuals in different breeding states. This suggests individual spatio-temporal variation in habitat use during the annual cycle, such that climate change could alter the frequency that individuals with different demographic profiles breed thereby driving a complex and less predictable population response. More broadly, our study highlights the importance of considering individual-level factors when examining population demography and predicting how species may respond to climate change