Human landscape transformation, especially urbanization, strongly affects ecosystems worldwide. Both urban stressors and parasites have negative effects on organism health, however the potential synergy between those factors has been poorly investigated. The body condition (i.e. body mass after controlling for wing chord) of 2043 house sparrows (Passer domesticus; adults and yearlings) captured in 45 localities along an urbanization gradient in relation to Plasmodium, Haemoproteus and...

Urbanization, one of the most extreme human-induced environmental changes, represents a major challenge for many organisms. Anthropogenic habitats can have opposing effects on different fitness components, for example, by decreasing starvation risk but also health status. Telomere length is a promising candidate for examining the effects of urbanization on the health status of individuals. Here, telomere length difference between urban and forest-dwelling common blackbirds is investigated.

The process of urbanization can lead to specialist species being replaced by generalist species in space and time, increasing similarity among bird communities. This phenomenon is termed biotic homogenization and is directly related to taxonomic and functional diversity. However, the effects of urbanization on phylogenetic diversity remain unclear. This study addresses the effects of the process of urbanization on the evolutionary distinctiveness of bird communities.