Journal of Avian Biology is seeking contributions for a Special Issue exploring how human-induced environmental change influences behavioural responses during the reproductive period in birds. Manuscript Submission Deadline: 31 October 2023

The primary response of individuals to environmental change is often behavioural. Birds are one of the best-studied taxa and have been shown to be very sensitive to human-induced environmental change at various levels (individual, population, species and community). They can also be good bio-indicators of anthropogenic influence on other organisms. However, we still need a better understanding of the occurrence, mechanisms and adaptiveness of behavioural responses to improve our ability to forecast the impact of global change on individual species and on biodiversity.

The goal of this special issue is to gather contributions that explore how human-induced environmental change influences behavioural responses in birds. We are particularly interested in behaviour during reproduction, including parental care (e.g. feeding), communication (e.g. expression of signals in adults and offspring), developmental adjustments, predator-prey interactions and key life-history traits like onset of breeding, fecundity and natal dispersal.

We encourage authors to submit research articles, short communications, reviews, methods, or viewpoint articles related (but not limited) to the following topics:

• Exploring behavioural responses and their flexibility (behavioural reaction norms) to human-induced environmental change

• Identifying key behavioural patterns in different life-history stages in response to human-induced disturbances

• Uncovering the molecular, physiological and adaptation mechanisms (e.g. maternal effects via eggs, social learning, hormonal or genetic changes) that favour or hamper behavioural responses to human-induced change

• Quantifying the fitness consequences of behavioural responses to human-induced disturbances (e.g. variation in trait-fitness relationships between urban and non-urban populations)

We are particularly interested in submissions coming from underrepresented geographic areas. If your institution does not currently have an Open Access agreement with Wiley to cover publication costs and if you are not covered through the research4life partnership, Journal of Avian Biology (JAB) is able to provide a limited number of waivers to cover publication costs. Read more here about JAB internal waivers.

 

How to:

If you intend to submit a manuscript for our special issue, please send a short email to any of the three subject editors (below) including a tentative title, type of article and the corresponding author. The deadline to state your interest is 1 May. If you have any doubts concerning whether your research fits the topic of the special issue, you may also contact any of the three subject editors before your submission.

The deadline for full article submission is 31 October. The manuscript will undergo the regular peer-review process. Please submit your manuscript through the JAB online submission system. As soon as an article is accepted, it will be published as an early view article on the journal webpage. All accepted articles will be published together in a JAB Special Issue. Please, check out the author guidelines of the journal about how to prepare your manuscript before submission.

 

Editors of the special issue

Judith Morales, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Spain (jmorales [at] mncn [dot] csic [dot] es)
Interests: social behaviour in wild birds and mechanisms underlying its plasticity, maternal effects in response to environmental changes, eco-physiology.

Elisa Perez-Badas, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain (eperezbadas [at] bio [dot] ucm [dot] es)
Interests: evolution of senescence, life-history trade-offs and the underlying physiological mechanisms shaping within- and between-individual differences, host-parasite interactions in response to environmental changes.

Juan Diego Ibañez-Alamo, University of Granada, Spain (jia [at] ugr [dot] es)
Interests: avian urban ecology including community ecology, eco-physiology and behavioral ecology. Broadly interested in other topics such as predator-prey interactions, brood parasitism and bird-microbe associations.