The 2025 Journal of Avian Biology review award

Journal of Avian Biology (JAB) and the Nordic Society Oikos (NSO) are proud to announce the outcome of the 2025 review award competition. In spring 2024 we announced the ‘call for papers' for the 2025 JAB review award, and by the deadline of 31 January 2025 we had received 11 mini reviews submitted by early career researchers. Seven of those submissions were eventually accepted for publication and, thus, competed for the prize of the winner and runner-up for the JAB review award. Evaluation of the accepted articles was done as outlined in our last award editorial (Tobler et al. 2024). In brief, reviewers and editors rated the priority for publishing the manuscript (‘scientific score') and the evaluation committee rated the articles based on three criteria of writing and readability: 1) clarity of sentences, 2) flow between sentences and paragraphs, and 3) engagement (‘writing and readability score'). While reviewers and editors only assessed one manuscript each, the evaluation committee looked at all articles combined. The average of the scientific score and the writing and readability score was then used to determine the winner (lowest score) and runner-up (second-lowest score). The evaluation committee for the 2025 award consisted of the two editors-in-chief, Staffan Bensch and Jan-Åke Nilsson, and the two subject editors, Theresa Burg and Dominique Potvin. As with the 2024 JAB review award, we received submissions on a wide range of topics. All accepted articles for the 2025 review award represent valuable contributions to the field of avian biology. They provide succinct and clear summaries of a research topic and give readers a quick overview of the most recent advances and current knowledge gaps. Three of the mini reviews highlight how ‘internal' processes, the gut microbiome and sleep regulation, may play critical roles in avian fitness. Two other mini reviews emphasize the importance of ‘external' environments, i.e. forest landscape heterogeneity and exposure to agricultural pesticides. The last two mini reviews focus on how non-breeding divergence in avian diversification and same-sex sexual behavior, may carry overlooked adaptive value and broader ecological or evolutionary significance. The accepted articles were rated as high priority for publishing (average scores ranging from 1.7 to 3.3) and were rated favorably with respect to writing and readability (average scores from 2.8 to 4.7). Below, we announce the winner and runner-up of the 2025 JAB review award and provide brief summaries with the key takeaways of each of the mini reviews. Except for the winner and runner-up, the order in which the articles are mentioned does not reflect the ranking. The junior authors of the articles are highlighted in bold. We are delighted to announce that the winners of the 2025 JAB review award are Pablo Capilla-Lasheras and Alice Risely. In their mini review (Capilla-Lasheras and Risely 2025), they summarize what we know, and what we need to know, in order to understand to what extent the gut microbiome confers important services for migrating birds. Long-distance migration is a demanding task where the gut microbiome might assist in efficient fat accumulation and balance the tradeoff between a downregulated immune system during flight and risk of infection. In a very comprehensive table, the authors provide examples to date that suggest important links between migratory traits and the gut microbiome. The authors discuss how future studies should design experiments to establish the causal drivers behind the intriguing patterns already observed in this emerging research field. The article is an excellent example of a comprehensive mini review, offering a state-of-the-art synthesis of a tightly focused research topic along with a forward-looking perspective. The article is well-structured with logical transitions between the different sections, with subheadings and not too long sections that keep the reader engaged. The article was rated high priority for publishing by the reviewers and editor, recognizing it as an important contribution to a growing field (see also Uehling and Houtz 2025), and presenting new ideas and current knowledge gaps. Natasha Gillies and Katrina Siddiqi-Davies are the authors of the runner-up mini review (Gillies and Siddiqi-Davies 2025). They review the literature on same-sex sexual behaviours in birds, including both short- and long-term pairings. They present evidence that these behaviours may not be inherently maladaptive, challenging a common assumption. Avian taxa are well known for their diverse strategies, which can vary both across and within species. Advancing research on same-sex sexual behaviours will deepen our understanding of the true diversity of factors influencing lifetime fitness, as well as the stability and evolution of species and mating systems. The article is written such that it is accessible to a non-specialist without a lot of jargon and therefore is engaging and easy to read for a broad audience. At the same time, the scientific approach, including discussion of methodology, and provision of evidence for and against the adaptive potential of same-sex partnerships in birds across both proximate and ultimate evolutionary scales, meant the article remained scientifically rigorous alongside being accessible. The mini review by Paul Dougherty and Matthew Carling (Dougherty and Carling 2025) focuses on the complexities of reproductive isolation and what happens outside of the breeding season. They discuss how changes in migration strategies or adaptations to non-breeding habitat may result in population structure. They provide several examples from recent papers including how differences in song on non-breeding grounds affect mate choice during the breeding season, how resource availability in non-breeding habitat impacts plumage and therefore mate choice, and how changes in migration strategies corresponding to climate change reduce population connectivity. The review also discusses how speciation and reproductive isolation can arise not only through spatial or temporal separation, but also through the fate of any hybrid offspring that are produced. In the second mini review on the avian gut microbiome, Jennifer Uehling and Jennifer Houtz emphasize how disentangling the interactions between diet and the microbiome can help us understand a range of questions including host fitness, behaviour and physiology (Uehling and Houtz 2025). The gut microbiome not only helps to break down nutrients and provide the host with vitamins and amino acids, but it also helps train the immune system and can affect host survival. Uehling and Houtz provide a nice review of how gut microbiome function, composition, and diversity relate to diversity of the diet and changes in the diet of birds, highlighting several recent studies. They go into more detail on the interplay of diet and gut microbiome focusing on the diet type, temporal shifts, and diversity in diet. They end their review with some of the current challenges in studying gut microbiome such as individual variation, sampling and barcoding. The mini review by Jérémy Cours and Rémy Duflot (Cours and Duflot 2025) evaluates the effect of habitat heterogeneity on forest bird communities, focusing on studies from non-tropical latitudes. Whereas this problem has received substantial attention regarding birds in the agricultural landscape, we know much less about how forest bird communities are impacted by landscape patterns driven by climate change and forestry practices. Based on data from 45 studies, the authors analyzed relationships between several diversity metrics (e.g. abundance, taxonomic and functional) and landscape characteristics. Overall, the amount of habitat and habitat heterogeneity showed positive effects on species diversity, however consistent patterns related to the scale of the effects were few across studies. The authors urge that future studies should develop improved methods for systematic classifications of forest characteristics beyond simple attributes such as dominant tree species and stand age. This will be necessary for understanding how forestry methods may impact bird communities. Sleep is considered to be very important for self-maintenance in many organisms, yet very little is known about the causes and consequences of sleep deprivation in birds. This knowledge gap is defined and studies needed to close the gap are nicely presented in the mini review by Kamya Patel, Juliane Gaviraghi Mussoi, Margaret Stanley and Kristal Cain (Patel et al. 2025). Most of our knowledge comes from studies in urban areas where anthropogenic light, noise and human presence per se fragment the sleep of birds. In many cases this sleep deprivation results in daytime napping with costs in the form of lost opportunities. The authors conclude with a very valuable road map for deepening our knowledge of especially the consequences of disturbed sleep. Bird populations in agricultural areas are declining and one of the causes has been attributed to the use of pesticides. Jéssica Jiménez-Peñuela, Claudia Santamaría-Cervantes, Elena Fernández-Vizcaíno, Rafael Mateo and Manuel Eloy Ortiz-Santaliestra (Jiménez-Peñuela et al. 2025) summarize our current knowledge about effects of a specific fungicide, triazoles, on behaviour and reproductive success in birds. They do so by applying a very potent method, adverse outcome pathway (AOP) analyses. The advantage of this way to organize the diverse data available is that besides summarizing effects on mortality and reproductive success, also effects on cellular and physiological levels can be elucidated to get a full picture of the hazards to focal birds. In conclusion, we are delighted to celebrate the second JAB review award, which brings together seven excellent mini reviews and underscores JABs and the NSOs commitment to supporting and showcasing the work of early career researchers. The mini reviews highlight creativity and scientific rigor of the contributors and we hope that the JAB review award initiative can become a platform to promote excellence of young researchers in avian biology. The ‘call for papers' for the 2026 review award has been announced in June 2025 and we eagerly await the next collection of high-quality mini reviews. – The authors declare no conflict of interest. Michael Tobler: Writing – original draft (lead). Theresa Burg: Writing – review and editing (equal). Dominique Potvin: Writing – review and editing (equal). Staffan Bensch: Writing – review and editing (equal). Jan-Åke Nilsson: Writing – review and editing (equal).

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