June 2015

Welcome to the third Joint Newsletter of The Auk: Ornitholog- ical Advances and The Condor: Ornithological Applications.

 

Check out the new Joint Special Collection on COLOR.   

      We encourage you to submit your manuscript to us today! With a continuous publication process, articles are published as soon as proofs are approved (the print issue comes out later). Our receipt-to-first decision times are short (average 33-37 days), and we provide a uniquely qualified copyediting service as part of our publication process for all published authors.  

     We hope to see you at the Joint AOU/COS Annual Meeting in Oklahoma, July 28 through August 2.  

     See the Editors' Picks of recent articles below!

 



Mark E. Hauber

Auk Editor-in-Chief

Philip C Stouffer

Condor Editor-in-Chief
Auk 2014 Impact Factor: #1             Condor 2014 Impact Factor: #8 
out of 23 ornithology-related journals 
Journals website:  aoucospubs.org  aoucospubs@gmail.com 
Central Ornithology Publication Office is a joint venture of the
Cooper Ornithological Society and the American Ornithologists' Union. 
Joint Special Collection on COLOR  
The Second Joint Special Collection, on COLOR: The Avian Color Revolution: Perception, Function, and Application comprises 26 articles from Auk and Condor and an essay.  
Fast Decisions on Submissions   
Average number of days from submission to first decision:
          For Auk, 33 days; for Condor, 37 days 
Average number of days from submission to final decision:
          For Auk, 44 days, for Condor, 47 days  
Optional Double-Blind Submissions 
Reminder: Auk and Condor submissions can be double-blind! Submit to The Auk      Submit to The Condor 
Editorial Conflict-of-Interest Policy
The Journal website has an Editorial Conflict-of-Interest Policy table showing what constitutes a conflict of interest for Auk or Condor editors and reviewers, with the authors of a submission. Editors and Reviewers review the table before they accept a peer review assignment. Also, Editors are blinded from seeing any of their own submissions.
Author Statements for Submissions
Ethics Statements and Funding Statements are now part of the submission system for The Auk and The Condor. These Author Statements are included in the Acknowledgments section of published articles.
Whole Issue PDFs Available to Members
Whole Issue PDFs are available at the top of the online Table of Contents, starting with 2014 issues of The Auk: Ornithological Advances and The Condor: Ornithological Applications. At  aoucospubs.org on the List of Issues page, choose an issue--and the first item in the Table of Contents will be Full Issue, a PDF of the entire issue including the covers. Cooper members can download Full Issue PDFs of The Condor and AOU members can download Full Issue PDFs of The Auk.
Twitter Update: More than 1,000 followers
@AukJournal and @CondorJournal each have reached more than 1,000 followers since the Journals' Communications Assistant started tweeting in January.  
Auk & Condor at the Joint AOU/COS Meeting
The Auk and The Condor will be at the Joint AOU/COS Annual Meeting this summer, July 28 through August 2, at the University of Oklahoma! Visit the Journals' table in the Poster Hall to meet the Editors and Staff (and pick up COPO swag). Sign up for the free Workshop on Publication and Peer Review led by Editors-in-Chief Mark Hauber and Phil Stouffer. To register for the AOU/COS Annual meeting, visit the meeting site at aoucos2015.ou.edu
YouTube Channel
Share video clips associated with your Auk and Condor papers on the Journals' new YouTube channel. Check rare footage of a Black Tinamou at:  https://youtu.be/xQ94viXVDZw. See summary below and a link to the paper. 
New Book in Studies in Avian Biology Series

Ecology and Conservation of North American Sea Ducks, the latest volume in the series Studies in Avian Biology, was published by CRC Press for the Cooper Society in April. Two more volumes are in the works for 2015.

Editors' Picks (open access) 
A Revealing New Look at the Secretive Black Tinamou

 

The Auk: Negret et al. have published the results of a year-long study of the Black Tinamou (Tinamus osgoodi hershkovitzi), including some of the first video and sound recordings of this elusive species, which is extremely difficult to observe due to its secretive habitats and cryptic coloration. They determined that Black Tinamous likely breed in March and April (when their vocal activity peaks), are most active in late morning, and eat primarily fallen fruit and seeds.  

      This species and article are of particular importance for Auk Editor-in-Chief Mark Hauber. In a recent writing project, he was charged to produce 200 words about the parental behaviors and eggs of this secretive species--and the lack of published information was nearly prohibitive to completing the project. It was therefore no small serendipity when this manuscript was submitted, and Mark jumped at the chance to have the new paper go through rigorous peer review and eventual publication in The Auk: Ornithological Advances.  

Lights Tuned to Birds' Eyes May Help Reduce Bird-Aircraft Collisions
 
The Condor: Doppler et al. found that  captive Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) became alert to a stationary model aircraft more quickly when it was outfitted with 470-nm (blue) lights. When the aircraft approached the birds with lights off, birds' response times slowed as the aircraft's speed increased, but lights helped mitigate this effect: Study authors suggest syncing stationary lights along runways with taxiing aircraft to help capture birds' attention before aircraft take off and using lights on board the aircraft during takeoff to improve birds' ability to detect and react to such large, fast-moving objects. 

 

Photo credit: A. Cuervo

The Auk: Avenda?o et al. describe the new Perij? Tapaculo (Scytalopus perijanus). Though specimens of this species had been misidentified in museum collections for decades, it differs from the other birds in its genus in its genetics, appearance, ecology, and vocalizations.

Landscape Connectivity Is Key for Species That Depend on Longleaf Pine  
 
Photo credit: P. Taillie
The Condor:
 Preserving isolated patches of habitat isn't enough to save species such as Bachman's Sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis) that depend on longleaf pine; habitat connectivity at the landscape level is also crucial. Taillie, Peterson, and Moorman surveyed Bachman's Sparrows in 111 habitat patches in spring 2011 and found that the strongest predictor of their presence was how much of the land within three kilometers was devoted to longleaf pine.

Full-Annual-Cycle Models Track Migratory Bird Populations Throughout the Year
 
The Auk Hostetler, Sillett, and Marra have published the first comprehensive review of the different types of full-annual-cycle modeling approaches available to ecologists who study migratory birds, including suggestions for potential improvements and the best model types for different situations. Many birds spend only a few months of the year in their breeding range before leaving to spend the winter in another region or even on another continent, and models that only make use of data from one season may not paint a complete picture; climate change, in particular, is likely to affect breeding, migratory, and winter ranges in different ways.

Photo credit: C. Whelan
The Condor:
 Belaire et al. surveyed breeding birds and human residents in 25 neighborhoods adjacent to forest preserves in the Chicago area. Residents' feelings toward birds were generally very positive, although a few birds such as House Sparrows and Common Grackles were sometimes nuisances. The more favorable someone's feelings about local birds, the more species they guessed were present in the area, regardless of the actual richness observed in the bird surveys.

Subspecies Should Be Based on Both Genetics and Appearance

 

The Auk: In a philosophical Commentary, Patten proposes that "subspecies" should be understood to refer to "heritable geographic variation in phenotype." This means that, to be considered subspecies, populations must be located in different geographic areas and have genetic adaptations to those areas that manifest themselves in the organisms' appearance.


Photo credit: M. Herse
The Condor:
 Greater Prairie-Chicken ( Tympanuchus cupido) leks are more likely to be abandoned if they are within eight kilometers of wind turbines, according to Winder et al. They monitored leks before and after construction at a wind energy development in Kansas, observing how many male birds were present and trapping males to record their body mass, which decreased slightly after wind turbine construction.
What Drives the Evolution of Bird Nest Structures?
 
The Auk: Hall et al. collected previously published descriptions of the nests of 155 species of Old World babbler and mapped nest height and structure to the birds' family tree. Their analysis confirmed that babblers' ancestors likely built off-ground, cup-shaped nests, and that the addition of a dome to cover the nest co-evolved with switching to nesting at ground level.
In This Issue
Most-Read Articles
Full-Annual-Cycle Population Models 
New Species of Tapaculo

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