Rats and Seabirds, A Global Review

Severity of the Effects of Invasive Rats on Seabirds A Global Review, was published in Conservation Biology, by Tershy, Croll, Keitt, Finkelstein and Howald.  It is a combination of many different case studies of invasive rats and their effects of seabird populations. Ninety-four different case studies of 115 different rat and seabird interactions on 61 different islands were used . It used these studies to determine which species of invasive rat was the most harmful to seabird populations. They found that the common black rat, or ratus ratus was the most harmful.  They also looked at different characteristics in birds that made them more or less susceptible to being effected by invasive rats.  These characteristics included things like size and breeding behavior as well as life history traits like whether they were ground nesters or burrowers.  They found that smaller burrowing seabirds were the most susceptible to invasive rat species.  This study also outlines the bird families which further study would be most helpful  in determining the effect of invasive rat species.  They used a data analysis method which i was unfamiliar with called meta-data analysis. This article was very useful for me because it provided me with a good deal of case study literature in the bibliography for me to search through.