Avian Research最新文献

{"title":"Escape behaviors of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) across China: Northern populations are bolder than southern populations","authors":"Yidong Wei,&nbsp;Yuran Liu,&nbsp;Kangning Luo,&nbsp;Qiqi Liu,&nbsp;Fangfang Zhang,&nbsp;Weihui Xing,&nbsp;Caizhen Wen,&nbsp;Jinmei Liu,&nbsp;Wei Liang","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100296","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100296","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Urbanization has significantly altered the habitat structure and behavioral patterns of animals. In urban environments with frequent human disturbances, animals may undergo adaptive adjustments in their escape behaviors. This study focuses on Eurasian Tree Sparrows (<em>Passer montanus</em>) from five cities across different latitudes in China, comparing their flight initiation distance (FID) in urban and rural areas to assess the impact of urbanization on their escape behavior and the trend of ecological homogenization. The results confirm the established pattern at the geographic level: a reduction of FID in urban habitats and a decrease in FID with increasing latitude. That is, northern populations of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow in China are bolder than the southern populations. In addition, FID is positively correlated with flock size, with rural flocks exhibiting more pronounced group behavior (observed flocking frequency for urban and rural is 28.74% vs. 40.7%, flock size variance is 26.90 vs. 55.63). Despite the differences between northern and southern latitudes, the variability of FID in urban individuals consistently remains lower than that in rural areas, supporting the trend of reduced variability in escape behavior among birds in urban environments. Driven by urbanization, the escape behavior of Eurasian Tree Sparrows tends toward ecological homogenization, meaning that behavioral differences between urban areas in different cities are diminishing. This trend may obscure the behavioral variability brought about by latitude gradients, indicating that urbanization not only shapes the behavioral adaptations of birds but also potentially weakens their behavioral diversity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100296"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Step-by-step to success: Multi-stage learning driven robust audiovisual fusion network for fine-grained bird species classification","authors":"Shanshan Xie ,&nbsp;Jiangjian Xie ,&nbsp;Yang Liu ,&nbsp;Lianshuai Sha ,&nbsp;Ye Tian ,&nbsp;Jiahua Dong ,&nbsp;Diwen Liang ,&nbsp;Kaijun Pan ,&nbsp;Junguo Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100280","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100280","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Bird monitoring and protection are essential for maintaining biodiversity, and fine-grained bird classification has become a key focus in this field. Audio-visual modalities provide critical cues for this task, but robust feature extraction and efficient fusion remain major challenges. We introduce a multi-stage fine-grained audiovisual fusion network (MSFG-AVFNet) for fine-grained bird species classification, which addresses these challenges through two key components: (1) the audiovisual feature extraction module, which adopts a multi-stage fine-tuning strategy to provide high-quality unimodal features, laying a solid foundation for modality fusion; (2) the audiovisual feature fusion module, which combines a max pooling aggregation strategy with a novel audiovisual loss function to achieve effective and robust feature fusion. Experiments were conducted on the self-built AVB81 and the publicly available SSW60 datasets, which contain data from 81 and 60 bird species, respectively. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves notable performance gains, outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods. These results highlight its effectiveness in leveraging audiovisual modalities for fine-grained bird classification and its potential to support ecological monitoring and biodiversity research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100280"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144771958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Metagenomic insights into the geographic divergence and functional adaptation of gut microbiota in the endangered Scaly-sided Merganser (Mergus squamatus)","authors":"Riya Wu ,&nbsp;Shengxian He ,&nbsp;Chen Zhang ,&nbsp;Keping Sun ,&nbsp;Longru Jin ,&nbsp;Haitao Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100297","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100297","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Investigating geographical variation and functional adaptation of gut microbiomes in endangered species is an emerging field in conservation biology. Here, we investigated the endangered waterbird, Scaly-sided Merganser (<em>Mergus squamatus</em>), that is endemic to East Asia. Using metagenomic sequencing, we characterized variations in gut microbiota composition and functional adaptation across Scaly-sided Merganser populations inhabiting the Fuer River, Manjiang River, and Lushui River basins in Northeast China. Furthermore, we investigated these variations at different developmental stages (adults and juveniles). Significant differences were observed in gut microbiota composition among the river populations, with the Fuer and Lushui groups exhibiting similar compositions that differed from the Manjiang group. However, no significant differences were found in the functional characteristics of gut microbiota among the three groups; these functions were primarily enriched in core pathways related to carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and translation. This finding suggests functional redundancy, where key metabolic functions remain stable despite differentiation in microbial community composition. The adult Scaly-sided Merganser gut microbiota exhibited higher alpha diversity and showed significant enrichment in pathways related to detoxification metabolism, environmental adaptation, and energy conversion efficiency, suggesting the capacity to adapt to complex habitats. In contrast, the gut microbiota of juveniles was enriched in metabolic pathways related to the essential and conditionally essential amino acids methionine and cysteine, supporting the high protein synthesis demand during the rapid growth and developmental stage. This study highlights the structural plasticity and functional adaptability of the gut microbiota in the Scaly-sided Merganser, providing an empirical basis for the species’ conservation and habitat management from a gut microbiome perspective.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100297"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145003886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Parental phenotypes and breeding performance: a review of non-experimental investigation in well-studied Western palearctic tits and flycatchers","authors":"Marcel M. Lambrechts ,&nbsp;D. Charles Deeming","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100300","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100300","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Numerous hypotheses predict associations between phenotype-associated breeder traits and reproductive success. In secondary cavity-nesting passerine birds, which have been investigated most, up to more than 90 parental characteristics have been linked to at least one field measure of breeding performance. However, within study populations, different parental traits, such as clutch size, first-egg date, egg size, nest architecture, plumage colour, adult morphometry, or song performance, are often weakly correlated across female and/or male breeders. Furthermore, many of these studies have been conducted outside the theoretical framework of the ‘Individual Optimisation Hypothesis’ of clutch size (IOH). IOH predicts that: (i) females with larger clutches will have larger broods at hatching and fledging compared to those with smaller clutches; and (ii) clutch size, which is adaptively adjusted to the parents' ability to rear nestlings, should always maximize the percentage of eggs producing fledglings so that variation in clutch size becomes disconnected from variation in breeding success. In this paper, we present the first detailed review of implications of IOH for parental characters other than clutch size. Our review covered 188 non-experimental studies and 1074 statistical results that examined how parental traits influence breeding success in Western Palearctic Great Tits (<em>Parus major</em>), Blue Tits (<em>Cyanistes</em> spp.), and flycatchers (<em>Ficedula</em> spp.). Clutch size explained one third of the variation in brood size at hatching and fledging within study populations. However, most parental characteristics associated weakly with the number of hatchlings or fledglings, likely because they did not correlate with clutch size. Overall, parental traits were poorly correlated with the proportion of hatchlings and fledglings per egg. We discuss why intraspecific variation in phenotype-associated breeder traits is often disconnected from interindividual differences in breeding success, and highlight the importance of underexplored research problems in avian breeding biology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100300"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamic evolution of olfactory receptor genes in the Turkey Vulture and Black Vulture","authors":"Joni E. Wright ,&nbsp;Edward L. Braun ,&nbsp;J. Gordon Burleigh ,&nbsp;Rebecca T. Kimball","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100285","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100285","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Olfactory receptors (ORs), the largest vertebrate multigene family, exhibit wide copy number variation among taxa, ranging from ∼100 to 4000. The ecological importance of smell has been suggested to positively correlate with OR gene number, though debate exists on whether the number of total ORs, functional ORs, or the percentage of pseudogenes matters most. While olfaction has been poorly studied in most birds, Turkey Vultures (<em>Cathartes aura</em>) demonstrate keen olfactory ability, capable of foraging using smell alone. In contrast, Black Vultures (<em>Coragyps atratus</em>) have been thought to primarily use vision to locate food. Comparison of the OR genes in these two New World vultures presents an opportunity to examine the dynamics of OR evolution in related avian species that may differ in olfactory abilities. Using a PCR and cloning approach with degenerate primers, we sampled the OR subgenome in Turkey and Black Vultures, as well as Red-tailed Hawks (<em>Buteo jamaicensis</em>) and the distantly related Chicken (<em>Gallus gallus</em>), neither of which are thought to use olfaction extensively. Our results indicate that Turkey Vultures have many more OR genes than Red-tailed Hawks or chickens. Surprisingly, Black Vultures had an intermediate number of OR genes. The number of OR genes we estimated in the Turkey Vulture was much greater than previously reported in studies that used short-read sequencing. Additionally, we found that OR genes from New World vultures and Red-tailed Hawks form clades that were distinct from the clade that included most chicken OR genes, indicating that chickens share few OR orthologs with New World vultures or hawks. As previously observed in other animal groups, pseudogenes appeared throughout all clades and their percentage varied among taxa. These findings suggest the OR gene family is highly dynamic, changing rapidly over evolutionary time, and that taxa may have distinct suites of ORs in their genomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chinese provincial-level new records for 96 resident bird species reveal poleward range shifts","authors":"Shengxi Chen,&nbsp;Zhehao Chen,&nbsp;Hongtao Lin,&nbsp;Haoting Duan,&nbsp;Jiehua Yu,&nbsp;Jiekun He","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100310","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100310","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Anthropogenic climate change is altering species distributions globally. While species distributions are expected to shift to higher latitudes and elevations under global warming, empirical evidence on distribution shifts is mixed, and factors mediating the direction and magnitude of range shifts remain unclear. Using a dataset of 132 new provincial records for 96 resident bird species from 2000 to 2023, we measured geographic distance, latitudinal shift, and temperature shift from each new record to the historical range for each species to test for poleward shifts. We assessed taxonomic variation in the magnitude of range shifts and used phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models to quantify relationships between species traits and the extent of range shifts. Our results revealed that new records occurred at a mean geographic distance of 420 km from historical ranges, with mean latitudinal shifts of +1.68° (poleward) and temperature shifts of −1.33 °C (toward colder climates). The magnitude of geographic range shifts was strongly constrained by phylogenetic relatedness. Habitat breadth, habitat openness, and centroid latitude of historical ranges emerged as significant predictors of range shifts. Our results suggest that resident bird species’ geographic ranges in China are shifting poleward, but the magnitude of these shifts is non-random across lineages. Species with broader habitat preferences and those from warmer climates are more likely to shift farther from their historical ranges and toward higher latitudes. This study emphasizes taxonomic variation in species range shifts and highlights the need for species- and site-specific conservation strategies under global warming.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100310"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145362208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Species status and genetic isolation in the Subalpine Warbler complex: Insights from mitochondrial DNA analysis","authors":"Utku Perktaş ,&nbsp;Andrew G. Gosler","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100294","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100294","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the genetic differentiation and gene flow within the Subalpine Warbler (<em>Curruca cantillans</em>) complex using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. We focused on three primary populations based on phylogenetic findings and geographical distributions. Pop1: Includes <em>C. c. albistriata</em> (distributed in extreme northeast Italy (Trieste), southern Slovenia, and south along the north Adriatic coast to Albania, as well as east to southern Bulgaria, Greece, Crete, and western Turkey, with non-breeding grounds in the central and eastern Sahel from eastern Mali to northwest Sudan) and <em>C. c. cantillans</em> (occurring in Sicily, central and southern Italy, and locally in north-central Italy, with non-breeding grounds presumably in the western Sahel). Pop2: Represents <em>C. iberiae</em>, found in Spain and western France. Pop3: Comprises <em>C. subalpina</em>, distributed across the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, some Tuscan islands, and north and central Italy, with non-breeding grounds extending into the western Sahel, reaching northern Nigeria and Niger. Our genetic analysis indicates that all three populations have expanded recently but maintain unique genetic structures. Despite this recent expansion, the populations exhibit limited genetic diversity. Using AMOVA, we found that most genetic variation is between populations rather than within them, indicating significant genetic differentiation. This study uniquely combines population genetic data with advanced analyses to provide detailed insights into the genetic structure and connectivity of the Subalpine Warbler complex, highlighting the distinct genetic lineages within the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100294"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144892159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phylogenetic relatedness overshadows acoustic similarity to regulate responses toward unfamiliar mobbing calls in Masked Laughingthrushes","authors":"Yuqi Sun ,&nbsp;Changjian Fu ,&nbsp;Yumeng Zhao ,&nbsp;Zhiyang Ding ,&nbsp;Miaomiao Lai ,&nbsp;Zhongqiu Li","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100299","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100299","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recognition of heterospecific mobbing calls can occur through both innate and learned mechanisms, with the former often explained by two main hypotheses: the acoustic similarity hypothesis, which emphasizes shared acoustic features, and the phylogenetic conservatism hypothesis, which posits that closely related species may share innate decoding templates. However, it remains unclear whether phylogenetic relatedness alone can drive the recognition of unfamiliar mobbing calls, a question with important implications for understanding the evolution of interspecific communication and anti-predator strategies. We examined the recognition of unfamiliar mobbing calls in Masked Laughingthrushes (<em>Pterorhinus perspicillatus</em>) using playback experiments with three allopatric species' mobbing calls of Leiothrichidae family. Results revealed two key findings: (1) Masked Laughingthrushes exhibited mobbing responses to unfamiliar mobbing calls, though at significantly lower intensity compared to conspecific playbacks. (2) Phylogenetic relatedness significantly predicted mobbing intensity, independent of overall acoustic similarity. These findings improve our understanding of how birds like Masked Laughingthrush instinctively recognize mobbing calls from other species. We show phylogenetic relatedness rather than overall acoustic similarity may be a key to this innate ability. Species that share a common ancestor may possess similar built-in neural systems for decoding alarm signals. We suggest that future research needs to combine neurobiological techniques to determine how inherited biases and feature decoding system together guide variable bird communities to perceive heterospecific mobbing calls.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100299"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145049240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impacts of prolonged dry season and artificial food supply on the wintering spatial distribution of Siberian Cranes: Implications for conservation","authors":"Deming Shen ,&nbsp;Fawen Qian ,&nbsp;Shaoxia Xia ,&nbsp;Chaoyang Wang ,&nbsp;Xu Chu ,&nbsp;Zhenyu Wang ,&nbsp;Hongxing Jiang ,&nbsp;Yankuo Li","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100308","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100308","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Poyang Lake, China's largest freshwater lake, is a critical wintering ground for most of the global Siberian Crane (<em>Grus leucogeranus</em>) population. However, increasingly prolonged dry seasons have degraded the natural wetlands of Poyang Lake, forcing Siberian Cranes to shift to artificial habitats. From 2015 to 2023, field surveys revealed a substantial increase in the number of Siberian Cranes in artificial habitats, with peak counts reaching 3000 individuals, accounting for up to 53% of the species' global population. Satellite telemetry of 13 individuals further confirmed the spatial use of these habitats, highlighting their consistent reliance on artificial sites over multiple years. Seven high-use hotspots were identified outside of Poyang Lake, including two artificial provisioning sites that supported dense foraging flocks for extended periods. Satellite telemetry confirmed this trend, with artificial habitats making up to 64.2% of the occurrence sites in some years. This reliance on artificial habitats was closely linked to the reduced tuber biomass in natural wetlands and low winter water levels in Poyang Lake, which collectively explained 83% of the variance in crane abundance in artificial habitats. Artificial habitat use peaked in December and January, indicating marked seasonal variation. Siberian Cranes also exhibited a pronounced circadian rhythm, foraging in artificial habitats during the day and returning to natural wetlands to roost at night. Despite the shift toward artificial habitats, natural wetlands remain critical for nighttime refuge. The continued dependence on artificial habitats raises concerns about disease transmission owing to dense congregations. Conservation strategies should prioritize both the careful management of artificial provisioning sites and the restoration of natural wetlands to improve food and habitat availability within natural ecosystems, ultimately enabling the return of Siberian Cranes to their traditional natural habitats.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100308"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145319603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The predictable HPAI H5 outbreaks in European wild birds","authors":"Shenglai Yin ,&nbsp;Qiaojia Xie ,&nbsp;Taej Mundkur ,&nbsp;Yufei Wu ,&nbsp;Hongliang Chai ,&nbsp;Qiang Wu ,&nbsp;Zheng Y.X. Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100311","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.avrs.2025.100311","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 viruses have caused widespread mortality in wild birds and poultry, with increasing spillover risk into mammals. The recently dominant clade 2.3.4.4b has produced multiple epidemic waves, first driven by H5N8 and more recently by H5N1, which has spread more rapidly, infected a broader host range, and caused higher mortality. While earlier studies identified consistent roles of waterbird community composition in shaping HPAI outbreaks, it remains unclear whether these factors also apply to the currently circulating H5N1. We analyzed HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in European wild birds during the 2021/22 epidemic, examining the influence of waterbird communities and environmental variables, and compared these patterns with earlier epidemics, including H5N1 in 2005/06 and H5N8 in 2016/17 and 2020/21. Our results showed that waterbird abundance, species richness, and the abundance of key species were positively associated with disease occurrence, whereas phylogenetic diversity was negatively associated, suggesting greater interspecific transmission among closely related hosts. Models trained on earlier epidemics accurately predicted the H5N1 occurrence in 2021/22. These findings demonstrate consistent effects of waterbird community composition across multiple epidemics and highlight their values as predictors of HPAI risk. Integrating community metrics into surveillance and early-warning systems can strengthen our capacity to anticipate future outbreaks across clades and subtypes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51311,"journal":{"name":"Avian Research","volume":"16 4","pages":"Article 100311"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145415620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}