Temporal variability in primary productivity can change habitat quality for consumer species by affecting the energy levels available as food resources. However, it remains unclear how habitat-quality fluctuations may determine the dynamics of spatially structured populations, where the effects of habitat size, quality and isolation have been customarily assessed assuming static habitats. The first empirical evaluation on the effects of stochastic fluctuations in primary productivity—a...

Animal movement often changes with habitat quality. Butterfly movements may be influenced by structural attributes of habitat patches or may reflect the distribution of food, mates, host plants or ecological interactions. The relative influence of structural and functional factors on flight patterns is poorly understood, partly because butterfly movements are often described by simplified representations of actual trajectories. Using high-resolution GPS tracking accurate trajectories of...

First review and synthesis paper on feather fault bars. A model is proposed to link fault bar severity with the propensity to produce fault bars and the intensity of the perturbation. This study helps to explain contradictory results in the literature, to identify knowledge gaps, and to suggest further studies.

Many theoretical models on the evolution of nestling begging assume this behavior is costly, so that only nestlings in real need of food would profit from giving intensive signals to parents. However, evidence accumulated for the last 2 decades is either contradictory (growth costs) or scant (immunological cost). Here, the existence of both costs is experimentally tested in pied flycatcher nestlings.

Melanins are the ubiquitous pigments distributed in nature. They are one of the main pigments responsible for colors in living cells. Birds are among the most diverse animals regarding melanin-based coloration, especially in the plumage, although they also pigment bare parts of the integument. This review is devoted to the main characteristics of bird melanins.