Piotr Tryjanowski

University of Life Sciences in Poznań · Department of Zoology

We examined how urban environments affect the abundance, proportion, and diversity of plumage color morphs in feral pigeons. Five major plumage color morphs (black, blue, white, red, and mixed) were counted in sixty 25-ha plots in Poznań City (Poland). Generalized additive models were used to study the correlations among abundance, proportion of mo...

Herein are all of the 16 papers published in the proceedings of the 5th International Shrike Symposium, held in July 2023 in Portugal. It is exactly 30 years since the International Shrike Working Group was established at the 1st International Shrike Symposium that was help at Archbold Biological Station, Florida, in January 1993. We are sad to los...

Over the past 30 years, research on shrikes has made significant strides, driven by technological advancements, long-term ecological studies, and an increasing focus on conservation. Shrikes (Laniidae), a fascinating group of passerines with predatory behaviors, are studied globally; however, research remains heavily concentrated on a limited numbe...

The white stork, Ciconia ciconia, is both a species familiar and charismatic to the public and a subject of extensive scientific research. Poland harbours a substantial breeding population of this species, characterized by behaviours typical of long-distance migrants. To chart a future course for research on Poland's white stork population, to deep...

The common cuckoo Cuculus canorus is an obligate brood parasite of many Eurasian bird species that exploit the parental care of their hosts. Although only females lay eggs in nests of passerine hosts, male and female cuckoos should cooperate to have a success in nest parasitism. Many bird species mobbing cuckoos as an element of deterrence of cucko...

The COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly altered human activities, particularly in urban areas, presented a unique opportunity to explore the dynamics of wildlife-human coexistence. In this study, we conducted bird counts in 36 parks in Pozna n, Poland, before (2019) and during (2020) the pandemic lockdown, and assessed the impact of lockdown-ind...

Detecting rare bird species is an essential aspect of ornithological culture. The pursuit of observing rare bird species is not only a key facet of birdwatching tourism but also a fascinating intersection between ornithology and sociology. However, patterns in birdwatcher gatherings around rare birds and the factors affecting these patterns in situ...

OPEN ACCESS - Surrogate species are often used to represent broader groups in conservation and research. However, whether a single species can truly reflect an entire ecosystem remains debated. The common cuckoo (hereafter cuckoo) Cuculus canorus has been suggested several times as an indicator of biodiversity with various outcomes. In this study,...

Current knowledge about the impacts of urbanisation on bird assemblages is based on evidence from studies partly or wholly undertaken in the breeding season. In comparison, the non-breeding season remains little studied, despite the fact that winter conditions at higher latitudes are changing more rapidly than other seasons. During the non-breeding...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and respective shutdowns dramatically altered human activities, potentially changing human pressures on urban-dwelling animals. Here, we use such COVID-19-induced variation in human presence to evaluate, across multiple temporal scales, how urban birds from five countries changed their tolerance towa...

Artykuł koncentruje się na przetestowaniu i weryfikacji prognoz dotyczących badań nad bocianem białym w Polsce, zaproponowanych w publikacji Ptaszyka (1998). Porównano zakres tematyczny prac opublikowanych przed i po 1998 roku oraz sprawdzono trafność ówczesnych przewidywań dotyczących przyszłych kierunków badań. Wykazano znaczący wzrost liczby pub...

OPEN ACCESS - Studies show that the common cuckoo exhibits a strong vocal response to rival playback. In this study, we aimed to assess if males would more eagerly vocally defend their home ranges a day after a simulated rival encounter. At 48 sites in Poland, we conducted a playback experiment where we played 20 calls repeated 5 times with a 5-min...

The appropriate structure of the digestive tract is crucial for individual adaptation to ecological conditions. In birds, the length of the small intestine, responsible for food absorption, is generally believed to be positively correlated with body size. In this study, we investigated the variation in small intestine length in the White Stork (Cic...

The white stork Ciconia ciconia is a bird species located at the top of the trophic pyramid in grassland and wetland ecosystems. This charismatic species is susceptible to pesticides and their environmental residues. In 2016, we collected blood samples from 114 white stork chicks across Western and Southern Poland. Chicks were sexed by molecular an...

The reaction of birds to the nest parasite, the European cuckoo Cuculus canorus, has been the subject of extensive testing in various aspects. However, while the cuckoo is a long-distance migrant, some of its hosts are sedentary species. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether species, primarily hosts, react to the presence of the cuckoo als...

Winter is a critical period for the survival of local bird species in temperate regions. Some wintering birds may rely on transient food, such as that provided at birdfeeders, but bird communities around birdfeeders may also attract predators. However, these effects of birdfeeders on interspecific interactions between birds and their predators rema...

Birds select breeding territories by assessing territory quality and considering predation pressure. However, in many small passerines, brood parasitism may also play an important role in territory occupancy. Settlement decisions are made under time pressure, especially for late migrants. An example of late migrants is the red-backed shrike Lanius...

Hops (mainly Humulus lupulus varieties) are a globally significant agricultural crop, known mainly for their use in the brewing industry. Hop plantations create unique habitats for birds, with structural poles potentially serving as nesting sites for cavity nesting birds. We surveyed 321 hop plantations (inspecting 100 random poles in each) during...

Plasticity and factors driving parturition dates of ungulates is a topic that has been addressed in many studies. These factors potentially give us clues about a possible trophic mismatch between the timing of seasonal events and resources due to an earlier onset of phenological spring introduced by climate change. Particularly, roe deer (Capreolus...

Tramways in urban areas for mass transit has been suggested to have a lower environmental footprint than roads. However, studies on the impact of tramways and the surrounding infrastructure on biodiversity is extremely rare despite the potential ecological effects associated with this anthropogenic feature. Surprisingly, we found fewer than 10 pape...

Urban ecosystems are formed by pronounced socio‐ecological gradients, which are distinct from other ecosystems and can simultaneously filter and promote taxa, ultimately affecting their interactions. However, the strength of the effect of filtering and facilitation across the different trophic levels could vary among biotic and abiotic factors. Her...

Urban biodiversity and ecosystem services depend on the quality, quantity, and connectivity of urban green areas (UGAs), which are crucial for enhancing urban livability and resilience. However, assessing these connectivity metrics in urban landscapes often suffers from outdated land cover classifications and insufficient spatial resolution. Spectr...

In cities, green areas are essential for biodiversity conservation, with land cover heterogeneity being a decisive factor. Yet, as heterogeneity increases for a given green area, the patch size of land covers automatically decreases, as the area available for individual species, especially habitat specialist species. This relationship, known as the...

White storks (Ciconia ciconia), an emblematic bird of high conservation interest, build massive nests which are also important breeding sites for other birds. However, their role as a potential source of food for foraging birds and bats is unexplored. In this study, we counted insectivorous aerially foraging birds (swallows, martins, and swifts), s...

Urbanization alters avian communities, generally lowering the number of species and contemporaneously increasing their functional relatedness, leading to biotic homogenization. Urbanization can also negatively affect the phylogenetic diversity of species assemblages, potentially decreasing their evolutionary distinctiveness. We compare species asse...

Matching the timing of spring arrival to the breeding grounds with hosts and prey is crucial for migratory brood parasites such as cuckoos. Previous studies have focused mostly on phenological mismatch between a single cuckoo species and its hosts but information regarding climate-driven mismatch between multiple sympatric cuckoo species and their...

Pollution by anthropogenic litter is a major threat to global ecosystems. Seabirds are frequently used as environmental monitors of litter ingestion, but similar research is rare for terrestrial birds. Here, we focused on pellet analysis from 117 nests of an iconic bird of the Western Palearctic, the white stork (Ciconia ciconia), breeding in south...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are numerical tools that combine species occurrence (or abundance) data with environmental variables, to predict the species’ distribution spatially. SDMs are increasingly used for purposes of conservation planning and management of ecosystems. The model performance can be measured as the goodness-of-fit (GOF), wh...

Vegetation, including trees, significantly shapes microhabitats for amphibians due to the leaf litter input, providing stable shelter, creating a microclimate or indirectly through trophic interactions. It is known that some species can survive in a highly modified urban environment. Species associated with open space can find stable habitats in ur...

Urbanization is one of the main current drivers of the global biodiversity loss. Cities are usually developed in a gradient between land-sharing (low density housing with small and fragmented green areas) and land-sparing areas (high density housing with large and non-fragmented green patches) depending on the spatial organization of urban attribut...

The appropriate structure of the digestive tract is crucial for individual adaptation to ecological conditions. In birds, the length of the small intestine, responsible for food absorption, is generally believed to be positively correlated with body size. In this study, we investigated the variation in small intestine length in the White Stork ( Ci...

Birdwatchers contribute an immense amount of data to citizen science databases. Thus, birding is important from the leisure perspective and from nature conservation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we studied birdwatchers on a global scale in over 50 countries by applying the model of behavior change, which focuses on changes in opportunity (spatial,...

X Zjazd Grupy Badawczej Bociana Białego odbył się w dniach 3–4 lutego 2023 roku w Tomaszowie Bolesławieckim, w gospodarstwie agroturystycznym „Klekusio- wo”, które jednocześnie prowadzi Ośrodek Rehabilitacji Dzikich Zwierząt im. Św. Franciszka z Asyżu. Wystąpienia zaprezentowane podczas Zjazdu dotyczyły obserwacji, badań i działań na rzecz ochrony...

Animal tolerance towards humans can be a key factor facilitating wildlife–human coexistence, yet traits predicting its direction and magnitude across tropical animals are poorly known. Using 10,249 observations for 842 bird species inhabiting open tropical ecosystems in Africa, South America, and Australia, we find that avian tolerance towards huma...

Understanding habitat and spatial overlap in sympatric species of urban areas would aid in predicting species and community modifications in response to global change. Habitat overlap has been widely investigated for specialist species but neglected for generalists living in urban settings. Many corvid species are generalists and are adapted to urb...

Urbanization affects avian community composition in European cities, increasing biotic homogenization. Anthropic pollution (such as light at night and noise) is among the most important drivers shaping bird use in urban areas, where bird species are mainly attracted by urban greenery. In this study, we collected data on 127 breeding bird species at...

Studies about charismatic bird species have been carried out using the general public; among the most common charismatic attributes are body mass and coloration. However, research on birders as a target population is lacking. Birders are people who identify bird species based on visual or acoustic cues. It is important to study this group directly...

Biomagnetic monitoring increasingly is applied to assess particulate matter (PM) concentrations, mainly using plant leaves sampled in small geographical area and from a limited number of species. Here, the potential of magnetic analysis of urban tree trunk bark to discriminate between PM exposure levels was evaluated and bark magnetic variation was...

Most ecological studies use remote sensing to analyze broad‐scale biodiversity patterns, focusing mainly on taxonomic diversity in natural landscapes. One of the most important effects of high levels of urbanization is species loss (i.e., biotic homogenization). Therefore, cost‐effective and more efficient methods to monitor biological communities'...

Weather importantly affects leisure, especially outdoor activities, like birding, which can be recognized as serious leisure. Outdoor attractive and feasible activities throughout the year, also in adverse weather conditions, are extremely sought after by therapists and leisure organizers. Then, we asked 388 Polish birders how their activity was re...

Urban ecosystems are associated with socio-ecological conditions that can filter and promote taxa. However, the strength of the effect of ecological filtering on biodiversity could vary among biotic and abiotic factors. Here, we investigate the effects of habitat amount, temperature, and host-enemy biotic interactions in shaping communities of cavi...

Water is crucial for birds, especially during hot weather. However, the availability of water, and its use by birds in modern anthropogenic habitats, is far from understood, especially outside arid regions. Here, we analyze a large nationwide dataset collected in the temperate zone and present an overview of small water resources used by birds in u...

Ticks are important vectors of pathogens that endanger humans and animals. Study of their behavior under laboratory conditions is important for both predicting their behavior in natural conditions and understanding their involvement in transmission cycles of pathogens, which may lead to effective prevention of tick-borne disease transmission or est...

The word “jizz” is part of the language of birding in the English-speaking nations. It’s meaning is combination of characteristics which identify kind of a bird, but this characteristics may not be distinguished individually. Jizz is described as embodied way of seeing that instantaneously reveals the identity of a birds species, suspending the lab...

To create more resilient cities, it is important that we understand the effects of the global change drivers in cities. Biodiversity-based ecological indicators (EIs) can be used for this, as biodiversity is the basis of ecosystem structure, composition, and function. In previous studies, lichens have been used as EIs to monitor the effects of glob...

Birding specialization can be measured alongside a continuum from the beginner to the specialist. The structure of birding specialization has three dimensions: (1) skill/knowledge, (2) behavior, and (3) psychological commitment. We tested the factorial structure and factorial invariance of the birding specialization scale in traditional and simplif...

The migration phase of birds is divided into two main states: stopovers and actual migratory flights. For soaring birds, such as storks, nighttime is especially important to conserve energy and to start the next day in favourable weather conditions. Although there is a large number of recent studies on white stork Ciconia ciconia, for example using...

Species richness is a widely used proxy for patterns of biodiversity variation in metacommunities. However, deeper analyses require additional metrics, such as the occupancy-frequency distributions (SOFD) of different local communities. The SOFD patterns indicate the number of shared species between study sites; therefore, they can provide new insi...

Bats have been identified as reservoirs of zoonotic and potentially zoonotic pathogens. Significant progress was made in the field of molecular biology with regard to infectious diseases, especially those that infect more than one species. Molecular methods, sequencing and bioinformat-ics have recently become irreplaceable tools in emerging infecti...

The phyllosphere harbours a diverse and specific bacterial community, which influences plant health and ecosystem functioning. In this study, we investigated the impact of urban green areas connectivity and size on the composition and diversity of phyllosphere bacterial communities. Hereto, we evaluated the diversity and composition of phyllosphere...

The ongoing growth of the human population will increase the rate of wildlife-human interactions. High levels of animal tolerance and flexible responses towards human presence seem to be among the key mechanisms behind successful wildlife-human coexistence, but this behaviour remains unexplored for most populations and species of animals. Here, we...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically altered human activities, potentially relieving human pressures on urban-dwelling animals. Here, we evaluated whether birds from five cities in five countries (Czech Republic - Prague, Finland - Rovaniemi, Hungary - Budapest, Poland - Poznan, and Australia - Melbourne) changed their...

Mobile telecommunications technologies have become an indispensable part of people’s lives of all ages around the world. They affect personal life and social interactions and are a work tool in the work routine. Network availability requirements and the quality of the Internet connection are constantly increasing, to which telecommunications provid...

Urbanization poses threats and opportunities for the biodiversity of wild bees. At the same time, cities can harbor diverse wild bee assemblages, partly due to the unique plant assemblages that provide resources. While bee dietary preferences have been investigated in various studies, bee dietary studies have been conducted mostly in nonurban ecosy...

The Blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) is a charismatic and easily recognized species. In Brazil, this macaw is strongly linked to a key habitat, the Cerrado biome, which is a predominantly dry forest savanna. Ara ararauna occurs and breeds in the city of Rondonópolis, a medium-sized city located in Mato Grosso, in the Central-West Region of Braz...

Urban green spaces (UGSs) are important elements of urban landscapes. Woody vegetation is a key component of UGSs, providing many socio-ecological benefits such as habitat provision and human well-being. Knowing plant diversity and vegetation configuration that underpin urban ecosystem processes and functions is critical to maximize nature contribu...

Numerous studies have shown a positive impact of nature on psychological restoration and on well-being, which, in turn, are related to life satisfaction. Previous studies were place based or episode assessments, usually in the field. Here, we studied bird-watchers at different levels of their recreational specialization, especially the factor commi...

Por la urgente necesidad de compilar informaciones sobre la ecología y biodiversidad de ciudades tropicales, hemos sido invitados por la Editora Springer Nature para organizar un libro sobre la ecología e diversidad biológica de ciudades tropicales de diversas escalas, y sobre cómo traducir estas informaciones en planificación y gestión urbanas rea...

Mobile telecommunications technologies have become an indispensable part of people´s lives of all ages around the world. They affect personal life and social interactions and are a work tool in the work routine. The requirements for network availability and the quality of the Internet connection are constantly increasing, to which telecommunication...

Animal and meat inspections in abattoirs are important in the surveillance of zoonotic diseases. Veterinary inspections in abattoirs can provide useful data for the management of health and welfare issues of humans and animals. Using the network analysis and ordination technique, in this study, we analyzed the data from 11 years of veterinary inspe...

Schooling is a concept that is as ancient as human history. Initially, offspring learnt to survive and subsist from their parents and immediate families/tribe. Later in history, with the evolvement of agricultural societies, they learnt trades. Eventually, with the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century that required concentrated man-power a...

In a modern world, both tick-borne diseases and alcohol consumption are among major public health threats. In the present opinion article, we pose the question, whether these two health problems: alcohol consumption and tick-borne diseases prevalence can be related. We hypothesize that it is possible due to at least three factors: outdoor places ch...

Strong declines of the White Stork Ciconia ciconia population in southwestern Poland: a differentiated importance of altitude and land use changes. Acta Ornithol. 56: 255-271. Abstract. Studies of long-term trends in avian populations require large-scale data not available for most bird species. The White Stork Ciconia ciconia is unique being monit...

Human-nature relationships are an important aspect of leisure research. Previous studies also reported that nature-related activities have a health benefit. In this study, we surveyed US-American birdwatchers at two time points during the COVID pandemic (independent samples). During the beginning of the COVID pandemic in spring 2020, we analyzed th...

Bats are particularly susceptible to environmental changes because of their low reproductive rate, longevity, and high metabolic rates, which lead to relatively high food requirements. Thus, bat populations take a relatively long time to recover from increased mortality rates, and monitoring schemes should cover long time periods. In this work, we...

Urban and suburban areas are among the fastest-growing land-use types globally, reducing and fragmenting natural habitats for many animal species and making human-wildlife interactions more common. However, cities also create habitat for several species considered urban tolerant or urban exploiter species. Additionally, the environmental characteri...

Urban ecosystems can sustain populations of wild bees, partly because of their rich native and exotic floral resources. A better understanding of the urban bee diet, particularly at the larval stage, is necessary to understand biotic interactions and feeding behaviour in urban ecosystems, and to promote bees by improving the management of urban flo...

Capsule White Storks Ciconia ciconia forming migrating flocks in southern Poland in autumn came from central Poland and eastern Germany, and used ploughed fields and cut meadows to forage before they moved south. Aims The aim of this study was to collect information on the flocking behaviour of the White Stork in southern Poland, with a special fo...