禽类孵化失败是一种普遍现象,影响了大约10%的产卵,而不是失去捕食,损坏,或遗弃。我们对孵化失败的理解在其基础机制及其在不同种群中的发生方面都受到限制。众所周知,与野生物种相比,受威胁物种和圈养种群的孵化失败率更高,非濒危物种,但是这些差异很少被量化,任何更广泛的模式仍未被探索。要检查威胁状态之间的关联,管理干预措施,以及种群孵化失败,我们对231项研究和241种鸟类进行了系统发育控制的多级荟萃分析。我们的数据集包括两个受威胁的(极度濒危,濒临灭绝,以及野生和圈养种群中的脆弱)和非威胁(几乎受到威胁和最不关注)物种,以及“野生管理”(“自由生活”)人口。我们发现所有种群孵化失败的平均总体率为16.79%,随着野生的孵化失败率,非濒危物种占12.40%。我们发现,受威胁物种的种群经历的平均孵化失败明显高于非受威胁物种的种群。不同的管理水平也与不同的孵化失败率相关,野生种群孵化失败率最低,其次是野生管理种群,被囚禁的人口比率最高。同样,受人工孵化特定管理干预的人群,补充喂养,与没有这些干预措施的人群相比,人工巢穴的孵化失败率明显更高。孵化失败和管理之间这种相关性的驱动因素尚不清楚,但可能是受威胁物种更有可能孵化成功率较低,也更有可能受到管理的间接结果,这表明保护工作正恰当地集中在潜在面临灭绝风险最大的物种上。这是迄今为止对禽类孵化失败进行的最全面的比较分析,第一个明确量化威胁状态和管理与种群孵化失败率的关系。我们讨论我们的结果的含义,专注于它们在保护方面的潜在应用。尽管我们确定了与孵化失败的变化明显相关的几个因素,大量的异质性没有被我们的荟萃分析模型解释,这表明影响孵化失败的其他因素不包括在这里。我们讨论了这些因素可能是什么,并提出了进一步研究的途径。最后,我们讨论了在文献中如何定义和报道孵化失败的不一致,并提出了一个标准化的定义,将用于未来的研究,这将有助于更好地比较人群,并确保最准确的信息用于支持管理决策。
Avian hatching failure is a widespread phenomenon, affecting around 10% of all eggs that are laid and not lost to predation, damage, or desertion. Our understanding of hatching failure is limited in terms of both its underpinning mechanisms and its occurrence across different populations. It is widely acknowledged that rates of hatching failure are higher in threatened species and in populations maintained in captivity compared to wild, non-threatened species, but these differences have rarely been quantified and any broader patterns remain unexplored. To examine the associations between threat status, management interventions, and hatching failure across populations we conducted a phylogenetically controlled multilevel meta-analysis across 231 studies and 241 species of birds. Our data set included both threatened (Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable) and non-threatened (Near Threatened and Least Concern) species across wild and captive populations, as well as \'wild managed\' (\'free-living\') populations. We found the mean overall rate of hatching failure across all populations to be 16.79%, with the hatching failure rate of wild, non-threatened species being 12.40%. We found that populations of threatened species experienced significantly higher mean hatching failure than populations of non-threatened species. Different levels of management were also associated with different rates of hatching failure, with wild populations experiencing the lowest rate of hatching failure, followed by wild managed populations, and populations in captivity experiencing the highest rate. Similarly, populations that were subject to the specific management interventions of artificial incubation, supplementary feeding, and artificial nest provision displayed significantly higher rates of hatching failure than populations without these interventions. The driver of this correlation between hatching failure and management remains unclear, but could be an indirect result of threatened species being more likely to have lower hatching success and also being more likely to be subject to management, indicating that conservation efforts are fittingly being focused towards the species potentially most at risk from extinction. This is the most comprehensive comparative analysis of avian hatching failure that has been conducted to date, and the first to quantify explicitly how threat status and management are associated with the rate of hatching failure in a population. We discuss the implications of our results, focusing on their potential applications to conservation. Although we identified several factors clearly associated with variation in hatching failure, a significant amount of heterogeneity was not explained by our meta-analytical model, indicating that other factors influencing hatching failure were not included here. We discuss what these factors might be and suggest avenues for further research. Finally, we discuss the inconsistency in how hatching failure is defined and reported within the literature, and propose a standardised definition to be used in future studies which will enable better comparison across populations and ensure that the most accurate information is used to support management decisions.