PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 2005

Nesting Success and Life-History Attributes of Bird Communities Along an Urbanization Gradient

Glossary

ANOVA (Analysis of variance)
Statistical method that yields values that can be tested to determine whether a significant relation exists between variables.
Brood parasite
An animal that lays its eggs in the nest of a member of its own or another species.
Chi-square (Χ2) test
A statistical test for assessing the significance of departures of sets of whole numbers (those observed) from those expected by the hypothesis.
Community structure
The physical and biological components of a community, defined as an association of interacting populations of species.
Interspecific competition
Competition for resources between different species.
Linear regression model
A statistical model used to estimate the conditional expected value of one variable y given the values of some other variable or variables x.
Logistic regression model
A statistical model used to predict a discrete outcome, such as group membership, from a set of variables that may be continuous, discrete, dichotomous, or a mix of any of these.
Multiple-brood breeding strategy
The production of more than one group of young per breeding season.
Nesting guild
A group of species exploiting similar nesting resources in a similar fashion.
Niche space
A multidimensional suite of environmental factors (or "space") that affects the welfare of a species.
Null hypothesis (H0)
A hypothesis that states the converse of the expected results in an experiment.
Open-cup nest
An open cup-shaped nest made with a variety of materials such as grass, moss, lichen, or spider web.
Ortho-digital maps
Digital maps created using orthophotography, which employs simple or differential rectification to remove displacements from conventional-perspective photography caused by camera tilt and relief of terrain.
Principal components analysis (PCA)
A multivariate analysis technique that orders a set of objects in any number of dimensions (fewer is better). It involves Eigen analysis of a correlation matrix.
Wald's statistic
The result of a statistical test to compare two correlated proportions.