The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Long‐term declines of European insectivorous bird populations and potential causes
Open accessAbstract
Evidence of declines in insect populations has recently received considerable scientific and societal attention. However, the lack of long‐term insect monitoring makes it difficult to assess whether declines are geographically widespread. By contrast, bird populations are well monitored and often used as indicators of environmental change. We compared the population trends of European insectivorous birds with those of other birds to assess whether patterns in bird population trends were consistent with declines of insects. We further examined whether declines were evident for insectivores with different habitats, foraging strata, and other ecological preferences. Bird population trends were estimated for Europe (1990–2015) and Denmark (1990–2016). On average, insectivores declined over the study period (13% across Europe and 28% in Denmark), whereas omnivores had stable populations. Seedeaters also declined (28% across Europe; 34% in Denmark), but this assessment was based on fewer species than for other groups. The effects of insectivory were stronger for farmland species (especially grassland species), for ground feeders, and for cold‐adapted species. Insectivory was associated with long‐distance migration, which was also linked to population declines. However, many insectivores had stable populations, especially habitat generalists. Our findings suggest that the decline of insectivores is primarily associated with agricultural intensification and loss of grassland habitat. The loss of both seed and insect specialists indicates an overall trend toward bird communities dominated by diet generalists.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Rue, H., Martino, S., & Chopin, N. (2009) · Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9868.2008.00700.x · Cited by 5,279
The birds of the western Palearctic
Snow, D., Perrins, C. M., & Gillmor, R. (1998) · Oxford University Press eBooks · Cited by 3,694
More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
Hallmann, C. A., Sorg, M., Jongejans, E., Siepel, H., Hofland, N., Schwan, H., Stenmans, W., Müller, A., Sumser, H., Hörren, T., et al. (2017) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 · Cited by 3,499
Agricultural intensification and the collapse of Europe's farmland bird populations
Donald, P. F., Green, R. E., & Heath, M. F. (2001) · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1325 · Cited by 2,012
Wilman, H., Belmaker, J., Simpson, J., de la Rosa, C., Rivadeneira, M. M., & Jetz, W. (2014) · Ecology · doi:10.1890/13-1917.1 · Cited by 1,994
Worldwide decline of specialist species: toward a global functional homogenization?
Clavel, J., Julliard, R., & Devictor, V. (2011) · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · doi:10.1890/080216 · Cited by 1,600
Increasing awareness of avian ecological function
SEKERCIOGLU, C. (2006) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2006.05.007 · Cited by 1,193
Declines in insectivorous birds are associated with high neonicotinoid concentrations
Hallmann, C. A., Foppen, R. P. B., van Turnhout, C. A. M., de Kroon, H., & Jongejans, E. (2014) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature13531 · Cited by 1,052
Comparative losses of British butterflies, birds, and plants and the global extinction crisis
Thomas, J. A., Telfer, M. G., Roy, D. B., Preston, C. D., Greenwood, J. J. D., Asher, J., Fox, R., Clarke, R. T., & Lawton, J. H. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1095046 · Cited by 955
Newton, I. (2004) · Ibis · doi:10.1111/j.1474-919x.2004.00375.x · Cited by 765
Cited by
Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers
Seibold, S., Gossner, M. M., Simons, N. K., Blüthgen, N., Müller, J., Ambarlı, D., Ammer, C., Bauhus, J., Fischer, M., Habel, J. C., et al. (2019) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1684-3 · Cited by 1,314
Ecological time lags and the journey towards conservation success
Watts, K., Whytock, R. C., Park, K. J., Fuentes-Montemayor, E., Macgregor, N. A., Duffield, S., & McGowan, P. J. K. (2020) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-019-1087-8 · Cited by 185
Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture
Leroy, F., Jarzyna, M. A., & Keil, P. (2026) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.ads0871 · Cited by 12
A 2026 horizon scan for biodiversity conservation in South Africa
Seymour, C. L., Tolley, K. A., Zengeya, T., Spear, D., Cloete, J. A., Dayaram, A., da Silva, J. M., Alexander, G. J., Handley, K., Joseph, G. S., et al. (2026) · Ambio · doi:10.1007/s13280-026-02365-3
Metadata
- Authors
- Bowler, D. E., Heldbjerg, H., Fox, A. D., de Jong, M., & Böhning‐Gaese, K.
- Venue
- Conservation Biology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-03-26
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1120-1130
- ISSN
- 0888-8892 (ISSN-L)
- 1523-1739
- OpenAlex
- W2923287188
- Cited by
- 328
- References
- 39
- FWCI
- 21.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Long‐term declines of European insectivorous bird populations and potential causes. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/cobi.13307
- The paper
- Bowler, D. E., Heldbjerg, H., Fox, A. D., de Jong, M., & Böhning‐Gaese, K. (2019). Long‐term declines of European insectivorous bird populations and potential causes. Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13307
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
