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Yellowhammer dialects and citizen science
Diblíková, Lucie ; Petrusková, Tereza (advisor) ; Linhart, Pavel (referee) ; Osiejuk, Tomasz S. (referee)
Bird dialects, the cultural phenomena that can be linked to migration, gene flow, speciation and cultural evolution, have been studied extensively. The yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella, a common European bird with a simple song and long singing season, has been a model species for studying dialects for decades. In this thesis, I collate several studies that benefited from citizen science approaches to push this field forward. First, we have compiled and unified information on yellowhammer dialect distribution scattered in numerous publications, and unified different dialect nomenclatures used in the past. We supplemented this with data available thanks to volunteers contributing to public databases and other online sources, and demonstrated that the continental distribution patterns of yellowhammer dialects do not support the existence of broad, geographically distinct macrodialect groups as previously believed. In 2011, as part of the Bird of the Year campaign of the Czech Society of Ornithology, we launched a year-long public awareness project "Dialects of Czech Yellowhammers". Its first year's results exceeded expectations in quality and quantity, so a one-year, conservation-focused citizen science project became a long-term, investigative one. In subsequent years, improvements to the web user...
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