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Ornithological Science
Abstract
Abstract
Nest-site characteristics may affect the daily survival rate of avian nests. We monitored the nests of Chestnut Thrush Turdus rubrocanus breeding in an agricultural landscape near the Lianhuashan Natural Reserve (central China) during the breeding seasons of 2013 and 2014. We describe the Chestnut Thrush's breeding ecology and used logistic-exposure methods and an information theoretic approach to assess the factors influencing daily survival rates of nests. Results from model averaging indicated that daily survival rates of nests consistently decreased from habitat edge to interior, contradicting the classic edge effect hypothesis describing predation of avian nests. Concealment of nests from below was positively correlated with nest daily survival rates, whereas concealment from the side and from above were not. These results suggest that determining the various effects of vertical and/or horizontal concealment on nest survival rates may help us assess the variation in the ability of local predators to detect nests.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project 31472012). We thank the staff of the Lianhuashan Nature Reserve for their invaluable assistance, and especially Yun Fang, Jinlin Li, Yunbiao Hu, Lijun Chen, Pengfei Liu and Yingqiang Lou for their help with fieldwork. We are also grateful to Rachel Vallender for comments on an earlier draft and for her help with English. We also thank the reviewing editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.
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