Urban birds conference, Leicester, England, April 2016

This 2015 video is called Watching Some Urban Birds in South America.

5 – 7 April 2016 next BOU Conference

#BOU2016 | Urban Birds: pressures, processes and consequences

Leicester, UK

BOU 2016 Annual Conference

University of Leicester, UK

Follow on social media #BOU2016

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Conference theme

Urban development is one of the most transformative human land uses. It already dominates much of the globe, and urban areas will continue to expand rapidly, including in biodiversity hotspots. This poses enormous challenges to biodiversity conservation and urban planning. Urbanisation simultaneously provides opportunities for researchers to understand how species cope with, and adapt to, extreme and often novel selection pressures including habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution (noise, heat, light and chemical), altered biotic interactions (with pathogens, predators and prey) and interactions with people. Understanding how wildlife responds to urban life has become a global research priority, and ornithology is at the forefront of this research frontier.

This conference will bring together ornithologists, conservation biologists, evolutionary ecologists, and behavioural ecologists from academic and NGO sectors to showcase the latest developments in urban avian research and conservation.

The conference will cover a diverse range of topics including the following:

Urban bird monitoring and population trends;
Mechanisms structuring urban bird communities;
The demography of urban birds;
Gene flow, population sources and sinks
Urban pressures and avian adaptation;
Behavioural, physiological and evolutionary processes;
Human-avian interactions;
Future perspectives for managing urban landscapes.

The conference will be international in scope and is aimed at researchers and students, conservation organisations, statutory government agencies and those engaged in policy, advocacy and conservation management. It will provide opportunities to share high quality science, network and discuss new ideas. Whilst the conference focuses on avian research and conservation, much of the discussion will be relevant to participants whose core interest concerns taxonomic groups other than birds.