Ecology of wading birds

Wading birds are dependent on wetlands that are under increasing pressure worldwide. Distributed throughout almost all wetlands, these birds have been the subject of many decades of intensive research. Under standing their ecology is a critical requirement of their conservation strategies. The amount of information obtained by the mid 1970s and synthesized at the 1976 North American Wading Bird Conference was most impressive. However, many new findings have been published since, particularly in the various fields of behavioral ecology and evolutionary ecology, and these help to clarify ideas on relationships between the environment and the birds. In this short review, I focus on a few topics where ecological studies have significantly improved our knowledge of basic requirements of wading birds. Such knowledge can now be applied to the conservation of wading birds and their habitats.