In 2022 I was approached by a Dr Will Jones, then at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, after the events outlined in my post, “When Science Imitates Religion”:
https://braydonforestringing.uk/2025/03/16/when-science-imitates-religion/
He asked if I would be happy to let him have my data, with a view to producing a joint paper on mortality and survival of Paridae in the Braydon Forest. It was clarified that such a paper would be acceptable to a particular journal subject to peer review. I provided the raw data, the description of the area and other background information. Will used a statistical analysis product, called Mark, to analyse the data. We produced the first draft and sent it in for peer review and got a number of questions back, which we answered and Will incorporated into a final draft. This was sent back as a final draft, and was rejected. Unfortunately, I wasn’t informed about the second tranche of peer-review questions, as Will had put himself forward as the correspondence author. Dr Jones had left the University of Debrecen to join a consultancy / research organisation and has ignored all attempts from me to contact him to discuss it. I am not into stalking, so I sent a final email saying I was going to publish a revised version on my blog. He hasn’t objected, so I am going to go ahead. I have to say that, having reread it, I understand why it was rejected, and I am very annoyed with myself for not picking up on it in the first place. Also annoyed that someone who has had several papers published should have made such an egregious error.
Instead of saying that the focus was purely on the Braydon Forest in Wiltshire, it was presented as appropriate for the entire UK. As I have pointed out in multiple posts, the situation in the Braydon Forest is definitely different to the mainstream, with a stable, slowly growing, Marsh Tit population, helped by sympathetic management by the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and Forestry England. Therefore, it was not appropriate to extrapolate that.
I cannot revisit the issue with the journal, both because I cannot get Will Jones involved, and there are other, political, issues that I cannot go into. So I have decided to publish an updated version of it in this blog, taking account of the second set of peer review questions / challenges set, but which I did not have sight of until just a couple of weeks ago when a very helpful member of the BTO Science team sent me a copy.
I have been told that the review questions are copyright, although they are not, and never will be published, so I will address them in the discussion without revealing the questions. For this piece I am going to publish the revised abstract, in the next I will publish the methods, results and discussion.
Abstract:
Woodland birds around the world are generally experiencing population declines due to myriad factors, including habitat degradation, insect population declines and migratory pressures. Adult survival is a key metric in determining population trends, as an increase in adult mortality can reduce individual fitness, and, thereby recruitment to the population. In this study, we aimed to explore adult survival rates and mortality trajectories in a guild of four tit species in the United Kingdom with different population trends.
This study focused on those species within a defined area, known as the Braydon Forest, in north Wiltshire. It is not claiming to be applicable to the UK as a whole. Using a 10-year dataset of 5076 individual adult Blue, Coal, Great and Marsh Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus, Periparus ater, Parus major and Poecile palustris), we found significantly different adult survival rates, with Marsh Tits having higher overall adult survival and Great Tits having the lowest overall adult survival. We found no significant temporal changes in adult survival across the time period of the study. However, there was a trend for lower survival over time for Coal and Marsh Tits and increasing survival for Blue and Great Tits. In addition, we looked at mortality trajectories for all four species and found substantial differences in the mortality curves for all four species, with Marsh Tits having substantially higher mortality in early life while mortality trajectories for Blue and Great Tits accelerated substantially faster after the initial phase. Taken together, we find that the four species have significantly different apparent adult survival rates which is likely due to differences in their life-histories. Furthermore, we demonstrate that adult survival rates can be poor proxies for population trends, given the strong declines in Marsh Tit populations and the large increases in Blue and Great Tit populations. Therefore, studies that aim to explore the demographic drivers of population declines in Marsh Tits should look to different survival metrics, such as juvenile or nest survival.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 