The ability of feathers to perform many functions either simultaneously or at different times
throughout the year or life of a bird is integral to the evolutionary history of birds. Many …

Birds have many kinds of internal and external parasites, including viruses, bacteria and
fungi, as well as protozoa, helminths and arthropods. Because parasites have negative …

Although self-medication in non-human animals is often difficult to document systematically
due to the difficulty of predicting its occurrence, there is widespread evidence of such …

This chapter discusses the invasion of an avian nest fly, Philornis downsi, to the Galapagos
Islands, its interactions with novel bird hosts, and the strategies that are being implemented …

The muscid genus Philornis comprises approximately 50 described species of flies, nearly
all of which are obligate parasites of nestling birds. Philornis species are native to the …

The declining-population paradigm holds that small populations are particularly vulnerable
to anthropogenic influences such as habitat destruction, pollution and species introductions …

Selection should act on parental care and favour parental investment decisions that optimize
the number of offspring produced. Such predictions have been robustly tested in predation …

Human activity changes multiple factors in the environment, which can have positive or
negative synergistic effects on organisms. However, few studies have explored the causal …

The parasitic larvae of Philornis downsi Dodge & Aitken (Diptera: Muscidae) were first
discovered in Darwin's finch nests on the Galápagos Islands in 1997. Larvae of P. downsi …

Davis and Arnocky's (2020) Target Article opens a very interesting and important debate on
an understudied topic. We applaud Davis and Arnocky for covering a vast literature stressing …