Simon J. Butler

University of East Anglia | UEA · School of Biological Sciences

Changes in phenology and distribution are being widely reported for many migratory species in response to shifting environmental conditions. Understanding these changes and the situations in which they occur can be aided by understanding consistent individual differences in phenology and distribution and the situations in which consistency varies i...

The dynamics of wild populations are governed by demographic rates which vary spatially and/or temporally in response to environmental conditions. Conservation actions for widespread but declining populations could potentially exploit this variation to target locations (or years) in which rates are low, but only if consistent spatial or temporal va...

Background: In migratory species, the extent of within- and between-individual variation in migratory strategies can influence potential rates and directions of responses to environmental changes. Quantifying this variation requires tracking of many individuals on repeated migratory journeys. At temperate and higher latitudes, low levels of within-...

In order to understand species’ sensitivity to habitat change, we must correctly determine if a species is associated with a habitat or not, and if it is associated, its degree of specialization for that habitat. However, definitions of species’ habitat association and specialization are often static, categorical classifications that coarsely defin...

Natural sounds, and bird song in particular, play a key role in building and maintaining our connection with nature, but widespread declines in bird populations mean that the acoustic properties of natural soundscapes may be changing. Using data-driven reconstructions of soundscapes in lieu of historical recordings, here we quantify changes in soun...

Ecoacoustic approaches have the potential to provide rapid biodiversity assessments and avoid costly fieldwork. Their use in biodiversity studies for improving management and conservation of natural landscapes has grown considerably in recent years. Standardised methods for sampling acoustic information that deliver reliable and consistent results...

Wildlife conservation policies directed at common and widespread, but declining, species are difficult to design and implement effectively, as multiple environmental changes are likely to contribute to population declines. Conservation actions ultimately aim to influence demographic rates, but targeting actions towards feasible improvements in thes...

The continued global biodiversity crisis necessitates the continuation and development of new well‐designed monitoring strategies and action plans with particular focus on under‐represented countries and regions. However, limited resources in terms of budget and availability of qualified field personnel can restrict the geographical coverage of mon...

1. Composite, multispecies biodiversity indices are increasingly used to report against international and national environmental commitments and targets, the Wild Bird Index being a prominent example in Europe, but methods to assess trends, error and species selection for such indices are poorly developed. 2. In this study, we compare methods to co...

Conservation decision-making for threatened species in human-modified landscapes requires detailed knowledge about spatial ecology, but robust data derived from tracking individual animals are often unavailable, with management decisions potentially based on unreliable anecdotal data. Existing data are limited for Hispaniola's two threatened non-vo...

The Hispaniolan solenodon, Solenodon paradoxus, and Hispaniolan hutia, Plagiodontia aedium, are the Dominican Republic’s only surviving endemic non-volant land mammals, and are high priorities for conservation. The country has an extensive protected area (PA) network designed to maintain habitats and benefit biodiversity, but which faces significan...

To maximise the effectiveness of conservation interventions, it is crucial to have an understanding of how intra‐specific variation determines the relative importance of potential limiting factors. For bird populations, limiting factors include nest‐site availability and foraging resources, with the former often addressed through the provision of a...

Functional diversity metrics are increasingly used to augment or replace taxonomic diversity metrics to deliver more mechanistic insights into community structure and function. Metrics used to describe landscape structure and characteristics share many of the same limitations as taxonomy‐based metrics, particularly their reliance on anthropogenical...

1.Estimating how much long-distance migrant populations spread out and mix during the non-breeding season (migratory connectivity) is essential for understanding and predicting population dynamics in the face of global change. 2.We quantify variation in population spread and inter-population mixing in long-distance, terrestrial migrant land-bird po...

Across Europe, rapid population declines are ongoing in many Afro-Palaearctic migratory bird species, but the development of appropriate conservation actions across such large migratory ranges is severely constrained by lack of understanding of the demographic drivers of these declines. By constructing regional integrated population models (IPMs) f...

Despite recent advances in avian tracking technology, archival devices still present several limitations. Traditional ring recoveries provide a complementary method for studying migratory movements, particularly for cohorts of birds with a low return rate to the breeding site. Here we provide the first international analysis of ring recovery data i...

AimThe extent to which individuals from different breeding populations mix throughout the non-breeding season (i.e. migratory connectivity') has important consequences for population dynamics and conservation. Given recent declines of long-distance migrant birds, multipopulation tracking studies are crucial in order to assess the strength of migrat...

Study aims and approach An aim of the UK NEA Follow-on (UK NEAFO) is to develop and communicate the evidence base of the UK NEA and make it relevant to decision and policy making. It also provides an important opportunity for those working on scenario methods and concepts to scrutinise the role of futures thinking in the management of ecosystem ser...

Concern that European forest biodiversity is depleted and declining has provoked widespread efforts to improve management practices. To gauge the success of these actions, appropriate monitoring of forest ecosystems is paramount. Multi-species indicators are frequently used to assess the state of biodiversity and its response to implemented managem...

European agriculture is undergoing widespread changes that are likely to have profound impacts on farmland biodiversity. The development of tools that allow an assessment of the potential biodiversity effects of different land-use alternatives before changes occur is fundamental to guiding management decisions. In this study, we develop a resource-...

Meeting European renewable energy production targets is expected to cause significant changes in land use patterns. With an EU target of obtaining 20% of energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020, national and local policy makers need guidance on the impact of potential delivery strategies on ecosystem goods and services to ensure the targe...

Increasing concerns about global environmental change and food security have focused attention on the need for environmentally sustainable agriculture. This is agriculture that makes efficient use of natural resources and does not degrade the environmental systems that underpin it, or deplete natural capital stocks. We convened a group of 29 'pract...

The ecological impacts of changing forest management practices in Europe are poorly understood despite European forests being highly managed. Furthermore, the effects of potential drivers of forest biodiversity decline are rarely considered in concert, thus limiting effective conservation or sustainable forest management. We present a trait-based f...

Quantitative scaling factors for extent of each forest change. (DOCX)

Qualitative scaling factors for extent of each forest change. (DOCX)

Modal reliance scores for European forest birds. (DOCX)

Overview of risk assessment process. (DOCX)

Resource requirements matrix for European forest birds. (DOCX)

Major changes to European forest habitats in recent decades. (DOCX)

Managing resource availability in landscapes is a key focus of biodiversity conservation action. Continued biodiversity losses suggest that current actions are inadequate, with better targeting required to ensure resource provision offsets resource deficits. This study uses the concept of functional cover types to establish links between land-use,...

1. Species-based indices are frequently employed as surrogates for wider biodiversity health and measures of environmental condition. Species selection is crucial in determining an indicator’s metric value and hence the validity of the interpretation of ecosystem condition and function it provides, yet an objective process to identify appropriate i...

The European Farmland Bird Indicator (EFBI) has been adopted as a Structural and Sustainable Development Indicator by the European Union. It is an aggregated index integrating the population trends of 33 common bird species associated with farmland habitats across 21 countries. We describe a modelling method for predicting this indicator from land-...

Evidence is presented of widespread changes in structure and species composition between the 1980s and 2003–2004 from surveys of 249 British broadleaved woodlands. Structural components examined include canopy cover, vertical vegetation profiles, field-layer cover and deadwood abundance. Woods were located in 13 geographical localities and the patt...

The EU has adopted the European Farmland Bird Index (EFBI) as a Structural and Sustainable Development Indicator and a proxy for wider biodiversity health on farmland. Changes in the EFBI over coming years are likely to reflect how well agri-environment schemes (AES), funded under Pillar 2 (Axis 2) of the Common Agricultural Policy, have been able...

1. Reductions in resource availability, associated with land-use change and agricultural intensification in the UK and Europe, have been linked with the widespread decline of many farmland bird species over recent decades. However, the underlying ecological processes which link resource availability and population trends are poorly understood. 2. W...

Summary1. The development of sustainable, multi-functional agricultural systems involves reconciling the needs of agricultural production with the objectives for environmental protection, including biodiversity conservation. However, the definition of sustainability remains ambiguous and it has proven difficult to identify suitable indicators for m...

Periods between predator detection and an escape response (escape delays) by prey upon attack by a predator often arise because animals trade-off the benefits such a delay gives for assessing risk accurately with the costs of not escaping as quickly as possible. We tested whether freezing behaviour (complete immobility in a previously foraging bird...

Variations in demographic rates due to differential resource allocation between individuals are important considerations in the development of accurate population dynamic models. Systematic harvesting can alter age structure and/or reduce population density, conferring indirect positive benefits on the source population as a result of a consequent...

This paper presents estimated national and regional changes in numbers of breeding woodland birds in predominantly broadleaved woodland in Britain between the mid 1980s and 2003–04, derived from the Repeat Woodland Bird Survey (RWBS). A total of 405 sites across Britain for which historical data on bird populations were available were re-surveyed b...

Sustainable development requires the reconciliation of demands for biodiversity conservation and increased agricultural production. Assessing the impact of novel farming practices on biodiversity and ecosystem services is fundamental to this process. Using farmland birds as a model system, we present a generic risk assessment framework that accurat...

Sustainable development requires that demands for biological conservation and increased agricultural production are reconciled. In the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, agri-environment schemes are a key component of this process, designed to mitigate the detrimental impacts of agriculture and improve the value of farmland to biodiversity. Clearly these...

Background noise should in theory hinder detection of auditory cues associated with approaching danger. We tested whether foraging chaffinches Fringilla coelebs responded to background noise by increasing vigilance, and examined whether this was explained by predation risk compensation or by a novel stimulus hypothesis. The former predicts that onl...

Wild-caught animals are often given a settling in period before experimental trials are ini-tiated. We used wild-caught chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) to investigate (a) the effect of settling in period duration on the likelihood that chaffinches foraged during experimental tri-als and (b) whether settling in period duration influenced measures of...

Long-term changes in the populations of woodland birds. A re-survey of breeding bird populations of broadleaved and mixed woodlands in 2003-04 to examine changes since the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and test these changes against a range of hypotheses for their causes. 1. In recent years there has been growing concern about declines in woodland bird po...

Summary 1. In the UK, over-wintered stubbles are an important foraging habitat for farmland birds, many of which are of current conservation concern. Maximizing the value of stubbles for farmland birds has largely focused on increasing food abundance but has ignored other aspects of foraging behaviour, such as predator avoidance and vigilance. 2. I...

Foraging site selection is likely to be influenced by vegetation structure since this can affect both the potential energy gain and predation risk that animals associate with a patch. We investigated foraging site selection by chaffinches, Fringilla coelebs, between a ‘safe’ patch with short stubble allowing earlier detection of an approaching pred...

For species that rely on visual cues to detect prey items, increasing the structural complexity of a patch can greatly influence forager behaviour through consequent reductions in prey detectability and accessibility. These effects are likely to manifest themselves in terms of foraging site selection and there is plentiful evidence for preferential...

Foraging animals frequently change their pattern of vigilance when they move from a patch with a clear view to one with a relatively obstructed view. This has been widely interpreted as compensation for a reduced ability to detect approaching predators in obstructed habitats. We test the extent to which changes in vigilance may compensate for the e...

The degree to which foraging and vigilance are mutually exclusive is crucial to understanding the management of the predation and starvation risk trade-off in animals. We tested whether wild-caught captive chaffinches that feed at a higher rate do so at the expense of their speed in responding to a model sparrowhawk flying nearby, and whether consi...