Lasting the distance: The survival of alien birds shipped to New Zealand in the 19th century

Invasive alien species are a major threat to biodiversity and human activities, providing a strong incentive to understand the processes by which alien invasion occurs. While it is important to understand the determinants of success at each of several invasion stages—transport, introduction, establishment, and spread—few studies have explored the first of these stages. Here, we quantify and analyze variation in the success of individual animals in surviving the transport stage, based on shipping records of European passerines destined for New Zealand. We mined the original documents of Acclimatisation Societies, established in New Zealand for the purpose of introducing supposedly beneficial alien species, in combination with recently digitized newspaper archives, to produce a unique dataset of 122 ships that carried passerines from Europe to New Zealand between 1850 and 1885. For 37 of these shipments, data on the survival of individual species were available. Using generalized linear mixed models, we explored how survival was related to characteristics of the shipments and the species. We show that species differed greatly in their survival, but none of the tested traits accounted for these differences. Yet, survival increased over time, which mirrors the switch from early haphazard shipments to larger organized shipments. Our results imply that it was the quality of care received by the birds that most affected success at this stage of the invasion process

What factors increase the vulnerability of native birds to the impacts of alien birds?

Biodiversity impacts caused by alien species can be severe, including those caused by alien birds. In order to protect native birds, we aimed to identify factors that influence their vulnerability to the impacts of alien birds. We first reviewed the literature to identify native bird species sustaining such impacts. We then assigned impact severity scores to each native bird species, depending on the severity of the impacts sustained, and performed two types of analyses. First, we used contingency table tests to examine the distribution of impacts across their severity, type and location, and across native bird orders. Second, we used mixed‐effects models to test factors hypothesised to influence the vulnerability of native birds to the impacts of alien birds. Ground‐nesting shorebirds and seabirds were more prone to impacts through predation, while cavity‐nesting woodpeckers and parrots were more prone to impacts through competition. Native bird species were more vulnerable when they occupied islands, warm regions, regions with climatic conditions similar to those in the native range of the invading alien species, and when they were physically smaller than the invading alien species. To a lesser extent, they were also vulnerable when they shared habitat preferences with the invading alien species. By considering the number and type of native bird species affected by alien birds, we demonstrate predation impacts to be more widespread than previously indicated, but also that damaging predation impacts may be underreported. We identify vulnerable orders of native birds, which may require conservation interventions; characteristics of native birds that increase their vulnerability, which may be used to inform risk assessments; and regions where native birds are most vulnerable, which may direct management interventions. The impacts sustained by native birds may be going unnoticed in many regions of the world: there is a clear need to identify and manage them

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship

Location-level processes drive the establishment of alien bird populations worldwide

Human-mediated translocation of species to areas beyond their natural distribution (which results in 'alien' populations) is a key signature of the Anthropocene, and is a primary global driver of biodiversity loss and environmental change. Stemming the tide of invasions requires understanding why some species fail to establish alien populations, and others succeed. To achieve this, we need to integrate the effects of features of the introduction site, the species introduced and the specific introduction event. Determining which, if any, location-level factors affect the success of establishment has proven difficult, owing to the multiple spatial, temporal and phylogenetic axes along which environmental variation may influence population survival. Here we apply Bayesian hierarchical regression analysis to a global spatially and temporally explicit database of introduction events of alien birds4 to show that environmental conditions at the introduction location, notably climatic suitability and the presence of other groups of alien species, are the primary determinants of successful establishment. Species-level traits and the size of the founding population (propagule pressure) exert secondary, but important, effects on success. Thus, current trajectories of anthropogenic environmental change will most probably facilitate future incursions by alien species, but predicting future invasions will require the integration of multiple location-, species- and event-level characteristics

Editorial: Avian biodiversity collapse in the Anthropocene: drivers and consequences

Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: ÇŞ thanks H. Batubay Özkan and Barbara Watkins for their support of the conservation biology research conducted at the Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology Lab at the University of Utah