However, regrowth occurred quickly, and sand deposited by the storm surge improved nesting conditions for crocodiles and sea turtles.
Local efforts by the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries program have benefited bird populations by adding crushed oyster shells to the bay's small islands for improved nesting conditions, and the restoration of marsh near the Nueces Bay Causeway to increase fish populations to satisfy the birds' dietary requirements.
As chairwoman of the Great Gull Island Project for the American Museum of Natural History, which owns the island, Ms. Hays leads a group of ornithologists and volunteers that improves nesting conditions and monitors the populations.
In addition, timing of nest initiation did not significantly improve nest survival.
Improving nest box programs requires urgent empirical research to identify the spatial factors that affect occupancy outcomes.
Landscape-scale measures need to be taken, such as conservation of semi-natural habitat to improve nesting and flowering resources.
With increasing and more prolonged heat-events predicted under climate change, future conservation-management programs should focus on improving nest-box thermal properties to enhance suitability for wildlife.
"In a colony with many thousands of workers, losing a few workers each evening to improve nest defense would be favored by natural selection," said co-author Francis Ratnieks, an insect biologist at the University of Sussex, U.K. The ants stuck outside might be old or sick, Tofilski conjectured.
They modified burrow architecture to improve nest guarding and increased their vigilance at burrow entrances to enhance offspring survival chances.
Tau reduction effectively reduced these deficits in a gene dose-dependent manner, improving nest building performance in Scn1aRX/+ mice lacking 1 Tau allele and bringing nest building performance of completely tau-deficient Scn1aRX/+ mice to control levels.
Furthermore, a University of New England study published in 2006 reported that the breeding success rates for the eastern yellow robin (Eopsaltria australis) and scarlet robin (Petroica boodang) on the New England Tablelands were improved after nests were protected and currawongs culled, and some yellow robins even re-colonised an area where they had become locally extinct.
