The regent honeyeater Anthochaera phrygia is a Critically Endangered Australian songbird, with current population estimates of < 300 individuals remaining in the wild. Low nest success is a factor preventing the recovery of the population, and management remedies are needed. However, a lack of data on intervention success raises uncertainty and impedes planning. To identify management priorities under uncertainty, we engaged with conservation practitioners and key stakeholders to develop and evaluate potential nest protection interventions. Four categories of threats were considered: avian predators, mammalian predators, extreme weather events and avian competitors. The interventions with the highest predicted probabilities of nest success under each threat category were, respectively: lethal control of avian predators, the use of tree collars to control arboreal mammalian predators, the provisioning of supplementary food and nesting resources during extreme weather events, and control of the noisy miner Manorina melanocephala, a competitor species. Our analysis shows that by applying a combination of conservation actions alongside improvements in nest detection, it is possible, based on the opinion of experts, to provide a pathway for the recovery of the regent honeyeater.

The unsustainable use of wildlife increases the risk of species extinction. In biodiversity-rich Indonesia, information on the scale of wildlife use is limited and requires further study. To address this, we explored the potential of text messaging (short message service; SMS) surveys to investigate levels and spatial patterns of domestic wildlife use, using songbird keeping and shark consumption as case studies because of their widespread occurrence in all 34 Indonesian provinces. We sent 340,000 messages for each survey during October–November 2018 and incentivized responses with a mobile data package as reward. We obtained survey response rates of 1.4% (songbird ownership) and 1.5% (shark consumption). Our results revealed an estimated 175.7 million songbirds being kept by 35% (80.4–86.6 million) of the Indonesian population and 33.5 million people (14% of the Indonesian population) to have consumed shark products in their lifetime. We identified hotspots of songbird ownership in several provinces in Java, corroborating previous findings, and new ones in the North Sumatra province, for example. The provinces of Maluku, Aceh and East Nusa Tenggara had the highest numbers of reported shark consumers per 1,000 people. Responses indicated a wide variety of shark products being consumed, highlighting the need for in-depth research to understand the explanatory factors behind these practices. These findings demonstrate the potential of SMS surveys to be a cost-effective approach for conducting large-scale studies on wildlife consumption patterns over a short period of time.

Parasites exposed to fast-developing hosts experience a variety of conditions over a short time period. Only few studies in vertebrate-ectoparasite systems have integrated the timing of ectoparasite infestations in the host's development into the search for factors explaining ectoparasite burden. In this study we examined the temporal pattern of attachment in a nidicolous tick (Ixodes arboricola) throughout the development of a songbird (Parus major). In the first experiment, we exposed bird clutches at hatching to a mix of the 3 tick instars (larvae, nymphs and adults), and monitored the ticks that attached in relation to the average broods' age. In a complementary experiment we focused on the attachment in adult female ticks – the largest and most significant instar for the species' reproduction – after releasing them at different moments in the nestlings’ development. Our observations revealed a positive association between the size of the attached instar and the broods' age. Particularly, adult females were less likely to be found attached to recently hatched nestlings, which contrasts with the smaller-sized larvae and nymphs. These differences suggest either an infestation strategy that is adapted to host physiology and development, or a result of selection by the hosts' anti-tick resistance mechanisms. We discuss the implications of our results in terms of tick life-history strategies.