Effects of climate variation on bird escape distances modulate community responses to global change

Warm thanks to Jacqui Sykoff for substantially improving the readability of former versions of the manuscript. GM was supported by the Hungarian Ministry for Innovation and Technology within the framework of the Thematic Excellence Programme 2020 (TKP2020-IKA-12, TKP2020-NKA-16).. KT was supported by institutional research funding IUT (34-8) of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. This paper is a contribution to the project URBILAND (PID2019-107423GA-I00/SRA 1013039/501100011033), funded by the Spanish Research Agency.Climate and land use are rapidly changing environmental conditions. Behavioral responses to such global perturbations can be used to incorporate interspecific interactions into predictive models of population responses to global change. Flight initiation distance (FID) reflects antipredator behaviour defined as the distance at which an individual takes flight when approached by a human, under standardized conditions. This behavioural trait results from a balance between disturbance, predation risk, food availability and physiological needs, and it is related to geographical range and population trends in European birds. Using 32,145 records of flight initiation distances for 229 bird species during 2006-2019 in 24 European localities, we show that FIDs decreased with increasing temperature and precipitation, as expected if foraging success decreased under warm and humid conditions. Trends were further altered by latitude, urbanisation and body mass, as expected if climate effects on FIDs were mediated by food abundance and need, differing according to position in food webs, supporting foraging models. This provides evidence for a role of behavioural responses within food webs on how bird populations and communities are affected by global change.Hungarian Ministry for Innovation and Technology TKP2020-IKA-12 TKP2020-NKA-16Ministry of Education and Research, Estonia 34-8Spanish Research Agency PID2019-107423GA-I00/SRA 1013039/50110001103

Author Correction: The genetic legacy of continental scale admixture in Indian Austroasiatic speakers

This Article contains errors in the Methods section, under subsection ‘Samples collection and genotyping’

Escape behaviour in Estonian birds: differences in flight initiation distance (FID) between urban and rural populations

This data contains 2129 observations of escape behaviour from 57 bird species from Estonian urban and rural habitats. Data was collected in 2015-2016 by Kunter Tätte. Flight initiation distances are accompanied by starting distances, alert distances and various other covariates. This data contains observations from four studies (but not observations collected by other authors):1) Samia, D.S.M., Blumstein, D.T., Díaz, M., Grim, T., Ibáñez-Álamo, J.D., Jokimäki, J., Tätte, K., Markó, G., Tryjanowski, P., Møller, A.P. (2017). Rural-Urban Differences in Escape Behavior of European Birds Across a Latitudinal Gradient. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 5: 66.2) Tätte, K., Møller, A.P., Mänd, R. (2018). Towards an integrated view of escape decisions in birds: relation between flight initiation distance and distance fled. Animal Behaviour, 136: 75-86.3) Morelli, F., Benedetti, Y., Díaz, M., Grim, T., Ibáñez-Álamo, J., Jokimaki, J., Kaisanlahti-Jokimäki, M.L., Tätte, K., Marko, G., Jiang, Y., Tryjanowski, P., Møller, A.P. (2018). Contagious fear: Escape behavior increases with flock size in European gregarious birds. Ecology and Evolution, 9(10), 6096-6104.4) Unpublished data. Mainly for a discontinued project titled "Effects of winter weather and latitude on escape decisions" in 2015 by Anders Pape Møller. There is also excluded data from the first three studies (i.e. either species with too few observations, or species not of interest in a particular study, or repeat observations)Some remarks:* All distances are in meters, but snow cover in cm* Temperatures are in celsius. * This data set is good for urban-rural comparisons because (a) I always collected observations from both habitats on the same day, (b) starting distances between urban and rural habitats are very similar, (c) there is a large overlap between species composition* Most birds were located on the ground (initial_perch_height = 0)* Whenever a column name has "repeat_..." as prefix, it indicates a second subsequent approach to the same individual. After the first approach I moved back to a starting distance of about 30 m and then recorded alert distance and FID again. This repeat data has not been analyzed or used anywhere. * In the column titled sex, M=male, F=female. I am not very certain about how well I was able to sex Motacilla alba, but observations from other species should be fine. Sex data has not been analyzed.* approach_speed "normal" indicates a walking speed of 1.3 m/s, while "fast" was about 2.6 m/s. However, note that some observations were made during wintertime with snow, meaning that the approach speeds might have been slower then. I would treat winter data with caution. There is also a column "bird_feeder_nearby" that indicates whether a bird feeder was in sight, but it does not necessarily mean that the bird was feeding there.* Column on flock size does not discriminate between same-species groups and mixed-species groups.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV

Surface modification of materials to encourage beneficial biofilm formation

Biofilms are communities of sessile microorganisms that grow and produce extrapolymeric substances on an abiotic or biotic surface. Although biofilms are often associated with negative impacts, the role of beneficial biofilms is wide and include applications in bioremediation, wastewater treatment and microbial fuel cells. Microbial adhesion to a surface, which is highly dependent on the physicochemical properties of the cells and surfaces, is an essential step in biofilm formation. Surface modification therefore represents an important way to modulate microbial attachment and ultimately biofilm formation by microorganisms. In this review different surface modification processes such as organosilane surface modification, plasma treatment, and chemical modification of carbon nanotubes, electro-oxidation and covalent-immobilization with neutral red and methylene blue molecules are outlined. The effectiveness of these modifications and their industrial applications are also discussed. There is inadequate literature on surface modification as a process to enhance beneficial biofilm formation. These methods need to be safe, economically viable, scalable and environmental friendly and their potential to fulfil these criteria for many applications has yet to be determined