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(A) A general overview of the combined GPS tracks for all the Nightjars that were recorded during the study. The inset shows an adult Egyptian Nightjar (Caprimulgus aegyptius). Green dots represent a recorded location, green line represents a track between two consecutive points. (B) An example of a home range map of one of the tracked Nightjars, the black line represents the 95% KDE area, and the yellow lines represent the 50% KDE area. The orange line marks the border between the West Bank and Jordan. This individual was active on both sides of the border, mostly within the closed military zone along the border. The map was created using Google Earth Pro 7.3.6 (https://www.google.com/earth/versions) & Adobe Photoshop CS6 (https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html), Egyptian Nightjar photo by Yohay Wasserlauf.
Source publication
Describing animal space use is essential for understanding their ecological needs and for planning effective conservation schemes. Notably, certain biomes and life histories are understudied due to methodological challenges in tracking animals in their natural habitats. Specifically, both arid environments and nocturnal species are not sufficiently...
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Citations
... As the number of GPS fixes varies with tag battery status (from 2 hr to 1 m per fix), we could not express habitat use as a proportion of points or time spent in the habitat, as Rock Doves could move substantial amounts while on low battery, making time inference imprecise. Instead, we divided the day into 30-min periods and focused on dove presence in a habitat during each time interval (see Wasserlauf et al. 2023). We used NatureScot data (https://opendata.nature.scot/ ...
Despite the role of many domestic animals as model organisms, our understanding of their undomesticated conspecifics is comparatively poor. This limits our ability to infer the eco-evolutionary context of phenomena studied in the laboratory and to explore domestication. The domestic pigeon's wild form is the Rock Dove (Columba livia). By studying 5 global positioning system-tagged wild Rock Doves in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, we present the first individual-level assessment of undomesticated Rock Dove movements, revealing extensive use of anthropogenic habitats in both a roosting and foraging context. This association with humans provides tantalizing opportunities for research into the pre-domestication human-pigeon relationship. More generally, this work highlights the value of researching laboratory model species in nature.
Land-use changes are considered one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Agricultural intensification, pastoral abandonment, and changes in forest management have led to the homogenisation of landscapes. In particular, the encroachment of grasslands and the densification of forests that are no longer pastured threaten species that require multiple habitats to nest and forage, such as the European Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus. Whereas previous studies have focused on understanding factors influencing the decrease of nightjars at regional or national scales, here, we aimed to assess fine-scaled habitat selection by nightjars within nesting and foraging sites based on high-resolution GPS tracking data. Vegetation structure and composition were quantified in the field. In the nesting habitat, nightjars prefer open forests with a low percentage of trees and where the ground is not covered by more than 40% of grass and crawling bushes (dwarf bushes such as Juniperus species). In contrast, when foraging, nightjars select open grasslands and biodiversity-friendly managed vineyards, both richly structured, i.e. interspersed or surrounded by other land-use types such as hedges or isolated trees. Both the nesting and foraging habitats are currently threatened, either by the abandonment of forest management, which makes stands denser and more homogeneous, or through agricultural intensification, which reduces land-use diversity. Clear habitat-specific management recommendations and political incentives are needed to simultaneously preserve and/or restore these critical habitats, which are important for nightjars that use complementary resources for nesting and foraging.
