Assembling a global dataset of avian survival rates
We conducted a search of the peer-reviewed literature for studies that
measured survival rate in birds, relying primarily on Web of Science
Core Collections and Google Scholar. We also included data for survival
rates of North American birds downloaded from the Monitoring Avian
Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program (DeSante et al.2015). For each study, we extracted information on species’ annual
survival rates and their standard error. When the same study provided
separate estimates for males and females, or where estimates were made
for different time periods, ages of adult birds, or circumstances (e.g.,
successful breeders vs. unsuccessful, brood parasites present vs.
absent) we took the geometric mean of those estimates. When estimates
were available from different habitat types within the same study (e.g.,
logged vs. unlogged forest), we took the geometric mean of those
estimates, provided that the study found no significant differences
between groups. If group estimates were reported as significantly
different, we chose the estimate from the control group for our
analysis. A list of the 249 studies included in our analysis and a
detailed account of our selection criteria is available in Supporting
Information S1 and S2, respectively.