Humans are transforming the natural environment at unprecedented rates, introducing a suite of disturbance factors that exert both direct and indirect effects on organismal energy balance. For instance, increasing temperatures impose direct thermoregulatory challenges, and also indirectly affect energy balance through changes in trophic dynamics and resource supply. Similarly, light, noise and chemical pollution directly disrupt sensory processes and regulatory systems that support energy balance, and additionally impose indirect effects by influencing community composition and predator-prey dynamics. Both independently, and in combination, direct and indirect effects of anthropogenic environmental change may induce plasticity in behavior and energy-allocation decisions, which may be adaptive or maladaptive in nature, and lead to changes in selective pressures that affect microevolutionary processes and eco-evolutionary dynamics.

The overarching goal of this Research Topic is to build toward a more comprehensive understanding of patterns of behavioral and bioenergetic plasticity through which avian species are responding to anthropogenic environmental change. Elucidating patterns of behavioral plasticity is currently potentiated by the development of advanced biologging techniques that can be leveraged to document changes in movement patterns, energy expenditure, and space use. Detailed field studies of reproductive and foraging behaviors are needed to assess how individuals balance energy allocation decisions in the context of global change. Studies of thermoregulatory and metabolic adjustments are also needed to grant insight into changes in energy budgets. Furthermore, to understand the eco-evolutionary implications of shifts in behavior and energy expenditure, studies are needed that examine the impacts of behavioral shifts on species interactions and fitness effects.

We are interested in both field and laboratory studies that use birds as a model system to elucidate the bioenergetic and behavioral mechanisms that organisms use to cope with anthropogenic environmental change, the implications of changes in phenotype, and physiological and genetic mechanisms mediating plasticity. We encourage empirical studies, review articles, and meta-analyses. Specific themes include, but are not limited to:

(1) The diverse direct and indirect mechanisms through which different aspects of anthropogenic environmental change (e.g. global warming, light pollution, habitat fragmentation, chemical pollution) induce behavioral and energetic plasticity.

(2) How direct and indirect effects of environmental change, or multiple disturbance factors, interact to determine optimal patterns of plasticity, or create situations in which multiple options may be optimal.

(3) How anthropogenic change affects behavioral or physiological variance components (within/versus among individual variance), as well as mean phenotype. Variance components are important to consider, as they jointly determine repeatability and scope for selection to act.

(4) Whether patterns of behavior are adaptive and support population persistence, or may be maladaptive. Central to this theme is documenting fitness outcomes.

(5) How reaction norms in multiple behavioral and bioenergetic traits combine to stabilize, or further destabilize, energy budgets.

(6) Individual differences in the capacity or strategy for coping with environmental stress, and implications of such differences.

(7) Effects on multiple interacting species, which may shed light on the eco-evolutionary implications of changes in behavior and energy expenditure.

(8) Physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying, or limiting, patterns of plasticity.

(9) Avian responses to urbanization as well as to human introductions of invasive species.

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Frontiers in Bird Science

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