Denis Lepage's research while affiliated with Bird Studies Canada and other places

... However, while bee trait data is prolific in the literature, we currently lack community data standards for sharing trait data that would enable such meta-analyses. Trait databases are increasingly emerging as tools for functional exploration within a taxonomic group, with valuable examples from Lepidopteran (Shirey et al., 2022), spider (Pekár et al., 2021, amphibian (Oliveira et al., 2017), plant (Kattge et al., 2011), and bird databases (Tobias et al., 2022); (with many other examples registered in the Open Traits Network; Gallagher et al., 2020). Progress toward aggregated bee trait data will depend on researchers adhering to principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable; Wilkinson et al., 2016) data. ...

... Most of these areas are related to threatened and rangerestricted specific species (e.g., Important Bird Areas identified by BirdLife International) or migratory species on some wetlands across migratory routes (e.g., Ramsar sites established by UNESCO). These strategies use expert knowledge on species distribution and density maps, while spatial distribution models had been used on a large scale to analyze climatic change influence (Gahbauer et al., 2022) and the effectiveness of the current protected areas networking (de Carvalho et al., 2017). ...

... Thus, we elected to evaluate trends at the circle-level and present individual λ values for each circle with estimates of uncertainty, to maximize transparency in coverage and confidence (Gutowsky et al. 2022), rather than pooling data across circles into larger spatial units to generate aggregate regional trend estimates. While the latter approach has advantages (e.g., maximize the sharing of information across space and time to fill data gaps, incorporate multiple correlates to explore drivers, generate predictive models or simulations, Ethier et al. 2020;Meehan et al. 2021), our relatively simple approach focused only on extracting trends from negative binomial models of counts allows the reader to fully appreciate the state of the underlying data and the structure of the fitted models. ...

... Consequently, the diversity of birds in the Neotropics, and especially in the Amazonian lowlands, is expected to be significantly underestimated. Due to differing species concepts, biologists often disagree about the species status of many taxa, which in turn affects the number of recognized species by different taxonomic entities (de Queiroz 2005) and subsequently conservation planning (Peterson and Navarro-Sigüenza 2016, McClure et al. 2020, Simkins et al. 2020, Lees et al. 2022. For birds, the biological species concept has dominated the taxonomic landscape and impeded the recognition of well supported, allopatric, and differentiated lineages as species. ...

... For many species, such monitoring includes components of citizen science, wherein public citizens are recruited as collectors of data (Brown & Williams, 2019). Long-standing examples of wildlife monitoring founded upon citizen science include volunteer surveys such as the U.S. Christmas Bird count (Dunn et al., 2005), road-side amphibian surveys (Sterrett et al., 2019) or other efforts of organised public involvement towards a given data need. Compared to this active investment of effort, other more passive examples of citizen science include the annual solicitation of harvest and observation data from hunters across many jurisdictions globally (Cretois et al., 2020;LaBonte & Kilpatrick, 2017). ...

... A further benefit of PD is that it is more robust to taxonomic lumping and splitting. With the advent of DNA sequencing techniques, it has become easier to identify cryptic species, leading to frequent changes in species numbers for many groups, for instance mammals [30] or birds [31]. While changes in species delimitation retroactively affect both the history of accumulation of species richness and known PD, they are likely to influence known PD proportionally less if taxonomic reassignments are of closely related species. ...

... Over-wintering duration and timing of departure for avian spring migration is a process influenced by a intrinsic factors such as high parasite intensity (Dietsch, 2005;Reed et al., 2003) can alter stopover 49 duration as birds recover from or accommodate these additional physiological burdens (Schmaljohann et For decades, ornithologists have known that weather variables influence avian migration timing in both 56 spring and fall (see: (Richardson, 1978). Factors that influence the probability of migratory departure (Taylor et al., 2017). We predicted 118 that birds with higher fat reserves, low intensity or no haemosporidian parasitism, lower HL ratios, and 119 lower total leukocyte counts would depart earlier in the year and during evenings of following winds (i.e., 120 tailwind). ...

... We excluded sites from the analyses if kestrels were not detected during at least 50% of all years surveyed at the given monitoring site, or if the mean count was ,10 individuals/yr. We aggregated hourly data to daily totals following the recommendations in Crewe et al. (2016b). ...

... CCDB data have few observations before 2003, and most departments have fewer than 10 years of observations. Together these limitations reduce sample size, power in statistical analyses, and the ability of CCDB data to measure causal effects, increasing the risk of type II statistical error (Crewe et al., 2016). ...

... Although both are important and very useful data sources, trend analysis using these data is significantly complicated by the fact that these data come from poorly standardized surveys that have many uncontrolled sources of variation such as observation effort, habitats visited, weather conditions at the time of the survey and, in the case of ÉPOQ, even the geographic origin of the data, the exact delimitation of the area surveyed, the period of the year, the period of the day and the duration of the survey. Various recommendations were recently made in an effort to improve the scientific value of the Christmas Bird Count data ( Francis et al. 2004;Dunn et al. 2005b). There have also been various statistical developments to better control the various sources of variation of the data in order to conduct more valid trend analyses (Link and Sauer 1999;Sauer and Link 2002;Sauer et al. 2004;Link et al. 2006). ...