华北平原北部农区麻雀的繁殖生态

2006年4-8月对华北平原北部河北廊坊农区麻雀(Passer montanus)的繁殖生态进行了研究。观察到麻雀的巢主要建于农户的房舍,少量建于电表箱中的空隙和电线杆洞中。巢由主体巢和进入主巢的通道构成。亲鸟饲喂雏鸟次数从雏鸟孵出后第5日开始迅速增加,喂食高峰出现在第7~9日,此后逐渐下降。繁殖期麻雀具求偶炫耀、补巢、警戒、食物处理和对幼鸟的指导等行为。     

贵州北侗乡村聚落文化生态的地方性知识研究

聚居在清水江流域的北部侗族,历史上深受荆楚文化的影响,其民族传统文化总是在与外来文化的不断碰撞中发展,在历史上几次大的社会转型中,其文化生态并没有失衡,而是从中得到升华发展.通过对北侗农业生产、宗祠和民居、大戏与阳戏、谱牒制度文化、婚俗、宗教信仰、祭祀与丧葬仪式等文化生态的地方性知识研究,揭示北侗民族文化生态的特质,对正确处理乡村传统文化的传承与文化的创新发展提供依据.     

Distributional Ecology of New Guinea Birds: Recent ecological and biogeographical theories can be tested on the bird communities of New Guinea

The concepts by which MacArthur and Wilson have transformed the science of ecology in the past decade, and the results of ecological studies such as mine on New Guinea bird communities, have implications for conservation policies. For example, primary tropical rain forest, the most species-rich and ecologically complex habitat on earth, has for millions of years served as the ultimate evolutionary source of the world's dominant plant and animal groups. Throughout the tropics today, the rain forests are being destroyed at a rate such that little will be left in a few decades. When the rain forests have been reduced to isolated tracts separated by open country, the distribution of obligate rain forest species will come to resemble bird distributions on New Guinea land-bridge islands after severing of the land bridges. The smaller the tract, the more rapidly will forest species tend to disappear and be replaced by the widespread second-growth species that least need protection (13). This ominous process is illustrated by Barro Colorado Island, a former hill in Panama that became an island when construction of the Panama Canal flooded surrounding valleys to create Gatun Lake. In the succeeding 60 years several forest bird species have already disappeared from Barro Colorado and been unable to recolonize across the short intervening water gap from the forest on the nearby shore of Gatun Lake. The consequences of the species-area relation (Fig. 1) should be taken into consideration during the planning of tropical rain forest parks (13). In a geographical area that is relatively homogeneous with regard to the fauna, one large park would be preferable to an equivalent area in the form of several smaller parks. Continuous nonforest strips through the park (for example, wide highway swaths) would convert one rain forest "island" into two half-size islands and should be avoided. If other considerations require that an area be divided into several small parks, connecting them by forest corridors might significantly improve their conservation function at little further cost in land withdrawn from development. Modern ecological studies may also be relevant to the understanding of human populations. For instance, during a long period of human evolution there appear to have been not one but two coexistent hominid lines in Africa, the Australopithecus robustus-A. boisei ("Zinjanthropus") line, which became extinct, and the Australopithecus africanus-A. habilis line, which led to Homo sapiens (27). The need to maintain niche differences between these lines must have provided one of the most important selective pressures on the ancestors of modern man in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene. Thus, any attempt to understand human evolution must confront the problem of what these ecological segregating mechanisms were. To what extent were contemporaneous species of the two lines separated by habitat, by diet, by size difference, or by foraging technique, and were their local spatial distributions broadly overlapping or else sharpened by behavioral interactions as in the case of the Crateroscelis warblers of Fig. 6? To take another example, there are striking parallels between the present distributions of human populations and of bird populations on the islands of Vitiaz and Dampier straits between New Guinea and New Britain. Some of these islands were sterilized by cataclysmic volcanic explosions within the last several centuries. The birds that recolonized these islands have been characterized as coastal and small-island specialists of high reproductive potential, high dispersal powers, and low competitive ability, unlike the geographically closer, competitively superior, slowly dispersing, and breeding birds of mainland New Guinea (10, 11, 13). It remains to be seen whether the people of the Vitiaz-Dampier islands, the Polynesians, and other human populations that colonize insular or unstable habitats also have distinctive population ecologies.     

长白山北坡两种鸟的种群生态比较

关于鸟类种群生态的比较研究较少。我们对长白山北坡的两种鹀类作了比较研究,包括居留情况、种群密度、繁殖力、新生雏和离巢幼鸟与成鸟量度比较,巢位、育雏及食物的选择。黄胸鹀和赤胸鹀平均每巢在留巢期喂育昆虫2343只,近321g,其中绝大多数是害虫,两种鸟和森林关系比较密切。     

Animal research. Activists win big on rodent, bird rules

A federal judge last month ruled that animal-rights activists have the legal right to challenge U.S. Department of Agriculture rules that exempt the vast majority of research animals from federal regulation. Observers say that the ruling almost guarantees that the agency will extend regulations governing animal handling and housing to thousands of academic and industry laboratories that work with rodents and birds. Those new rules, say animal-care experts, could impose costly new requirements on labs that don't meet standards set by the private Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.