Our results find that to best support the growth of the human-managed population of sihek so that releases can continue into the wild, younger and less-inbred males should be prioritised for breeding, and eggs should be parent incubated where possible. See shorturl.at/w0OpY to learn more! 6/6

Analysis showed that #sihek overall hatching success is only ~30%, compared to ~83% across birds and ~79% across similarly threatened birds and those under human care (doi.org/10.1111/acv....), with sire inbreeding, sire age and artificial incubation likely the driving factors behind this 5/6

We began by collecting egg outcome data from many of the institutions that care for sihek, then quantified egg viability and hatching success rates before running Bayesian generalised mixed effects models to determine which factors may limit sihek reproductive success 4/6

The #Sihek (Guam kingfisher) is one such EW species, living solely in human care from the 1980s until a successful release into the wild in 2024. This project aims to understand sihek hatching success in order to help the human-managed population to thrive and enable support for future releases 3/6

Unfortunately, highly threatened birds and those under human care often suffer from low hatching success due to population bottlenecks, small population sizes and inbreeding depression amongst other reasons (doi.org/10.1111/brv...., doi.org/10.1111/acv....) 2/6

#ExtinctInTheWild (EW) species are some of the most at risk in the world, existing only in human care. I’m a PhD student at @zslofficial.bsky.social and @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social studying how time spent in human care may affect EW bird recovery #BOU2025 #Ornithology #ConservationScience 🌍 🦤 🧪 1/6