SynthesisPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2023
Why do some bird species incorporate more anthropogenic materials into their nests than others?
Synthesis in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Why do some bird species incorporate more anthropogenic materials into their nests than others?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Ecological Trap in the Nest: Human Hair Causes the Death of Breeding Barn Swallows (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- From Leaves to Litter: Use of Anthropogenic Nesting Materials in Hibernation Nests of the European Hedgehog.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Drivers and consequences of nest ectoparasite pressure in tit nestlings.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2025Article
- Microscopic anthropogenic waste ingestion by small terrestrial European passerines: evidence from finch and tit families.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Neophobia Hypothesis: nest decoration in birds may reduce predation by corvids.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Article
- The evolutionary ecology of nests: a cross-taxon approach.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many bird species incorporate anthropogenic materials (e.g. sweet wrappers, cigarette butts and plastic strings) into their nests. Anthropogenic materials have become widely available as nesting materials in marine and terrestrial environments globally. These human-made objects can provide important benefits to birds such as serving as reliable signals to conspecifics or protecting against ectoparasites, but they can also incur fundamental survival and energetic costs via offspring entanglement and reduced insulative properties, respectively. From an ecological perspective, several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the use of anthropogenic nest materials (ANMs) by birds but no previous interspecific study has tried to identify the underlying mechanisms of this behaviour. In this study, we performed a systematic literature search and ran phylogenetically controlled comparative analyses to examine interspecific variation in the use of ANM and to examine the influence of several ecological and life-history traits. We found that sexual dimorphism and nest type significantly influenced the use of ANMs by birds providing support for the 'signalling hypothesis' that implies that ANMs reflect the quality of the nest builder. However, we found no support for the 'age' and 'new location' hypotheses, nor for a phylogenetic pattern in this behaviour, suggesting that it is widespread throughout birds. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolutionary ecology of nests: a cross-taxon approach'.
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