Abstract
Papanikolas, N., T. G. Hadjikyriakou, M. Sebastianelli, and A. N. G. Kirschel. 2021. Habitat selection and interspecific competition between Sylvia warblers in Cyprus following the rapid expansion of a recent colonizer. Avian Conservation and Ecology 16(2):11. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01937-160211
Highlights
Island endemism may result from populations colonizing islands that have adapted to the limited range of habitats found in their new environment, coupled with an absence of gene flow with mainland populations (Newton 2003)
We found a total of 1138 individuals of the three target Sylvia species (Table 1), with the most abundant being Cyprus Warbler (590 individuals) followed by Sardinian Warbler (387 individuals) and Spectacled Warbler, which was the least represented in our surveys (161 individuals)
We show that Cyprus Warbler significantly declined over the five years of the study (Table 2, Fig. 2, Table A1.3)
Summary
Island endemism may result from populations colonizing islands that have adapted to the limited range of habitats found in their new environment, coupled with an absence of gene flow with mainland populations (Newton 2003). The impact of interactions with new colonizers is potentially greater on islands compared with continental regions (Blondel 2000), possibly because of the absence of coevolution between native insular species and potential competitors. Native insular species might be especially vulnerable to emerging competitive pressures. Such a negative impact of novel competitors is likely to be similar, regardless of if their origin is due to anthropogenic causes or natural colonization (Nackley et al 2017). One factor that may contribute to the pressure on incumbent insular species is that islands rarely provide alternative habitats suitable for endemic species to shift their population ranges to in order to minimize competition with new colonizers (Jehl and Parkes 1983, Vilà and Hulme 2017)
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