Mohammed Almalki

In biparental Charadriinae plovers, male and female incubation duties often resemble daily routines, with males typically incubating at night and females incubating during the day. By analysing incubation behaviour in three Arctic populations of Common Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula, we show that these diel routines are lost in the 24-h sunlight of the Arctic. In contrast, a non-Arctic population in East Scotland exhibited significant daily routines, with males dominating incubation during the late afternoon and night, and females dominating incubation during the early morning and midday hours. These patterns suggest that clear light/dark cycles are necessary for daily incubation routines to form in the Common Ringed Plover, although further research is needed to understand the specific drivers of this behaviour.

The Laughing Dove (Streptopelia senegalensis) is a columbid bird commonly found throughout most of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India and Australia. Its preferred habitat includes scrubland, agricultural lands, and human settlements. Despite this species’ extensive breeding range, very little information is available regarding its breeding ecology. The main objective of this study was to investigate the breeding features of the Laughing Dove in Taif City, Saudi Arabia between March and May 2018 and December 2018 and May 2019. The results indicate that this species constructs its nests at a mean height of 2.74 ± 0.1 m from the ground. The average number of nesting materials used for building a Laughing Dove nest was 109.3 ± 11.25. This study recorded that this species starts breeding in the middle of February. A clutch of two eggs comprised 72% of all the nests, with a mean of 1.75 ± 0.06 eggs per clutch. The average egg size was 25.27 ± 0.43 mm x 20.25 ± 0.19 mm, with an a...

Conservation biology uses various tools including spatial ecology and molecular ecology to provide better understanding of species that can be used to support and design effective conservation strategies. Many wetland bird species in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are poorly known, and we lack detailed knowledge about their breeding ecology, spatial distribution and genetic differentiation. The first objective of my PhD research was to investigate the parental behaviour of an understudied endemic shorebird to the Middle East, the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola to record parental behaviour at the burrows over a 24-hour period. Since adult males and females look identical, I used molecular markers for sex determination. Molecular sexing was conducted using two different markers applied for 66 Crab Plover blood samples. I demonstrated that both males and females fed chicks, and that females brought food to chicks more frequently than did males (Chapter 2). The second objective was to in...

This article employs theories of counterpublics to investigate the Arab-American press before and after 9/11 as a counterpublic to the American war on terror. We use Squires's categorization of counterpublics as (1) assimilative enclaves,(2) satellites seeking ...