The diversity, distribution and conservation status of the tree‐cavity‐nesting birds of the world
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Aim Globally, many bird species nest in tree cavities that are either excavated or formed through decay or damage processes. We assembled an overview of all tree‐cavity nesters (excavators and non‐excavators) in the world, analysed their geographic distribution and listed the conservation status of all species. Location This is a global analysis of species from every continent except for Antarctica where the lack of trees precludes the occurrence of this group. Methods We reviewed the online version of the Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, http://www.hbw.com/ , and primary literature for species known to nest in tree cavities, with tree cavities defined as holes that a bird can enter such that it is not visible from the outside. We classified species by nester type (excavator or non‐excavator, and obligate or facultative where possible), conservation threat status and zoogeographic region, and tested for statistical differences in species distributions across realms using chi‐square tests. Results At least 1878 species (18.1% of all bird species in the world) nest in tree cavities, of which we considered 355 to be primary excavators, 126 facultative excavators and 1357 non‐excavators (we were unable to classify nesting type for 40 species). At least 338 species use cavities created by woodpeckers (Picidae), excluding reuse by woodpeckers themselves. About 13% (249 species) of tree‐cavity nesters experience major threats (i.e., status of vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered). The highest richness of tree‐cavity nesters is found in the Neotropical (678 species) and Oriental (453) regions, and the highest proportion of threatened species in Australasia (17%). Main conclusion Maintenance of a continual supply of cavities, a process in which woodpeckers and the processes of decay play critical roles, is a global conservation priority as tree cavities provide important nesting sites for many bird species.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it