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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

A catastrophic collapse for the ‘flying banana’ of the Kalahari

The numbers of fledglings of the southern yellow-billed hornbill have declined steeply at one South African locale.
A southern yellow-billed hornbill (Tockus leucomelas) flying in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

Nest-box occupation by southern yellow-billed hornbills at a site in the Kalahari Desert fell from an average of 52% to 12% between 2008 and 2019. Credit: Juergen & Christine Sohns/Nature Picture Library

Birds called southern yellow-billed hornbills have long lived in the arid Kalahari Desert. But new findings show that the breeding performance of one population of the birds is collapsing — and climate change might be to blame1.

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Nature 606, 437 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01579-1

References

  1. Pattinson, N. B. et al. Front. Ecol. Evol. 10, 842264 (2022).

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