We review evidence for and against the use of erythrocyte indicators of health status and
condition, parasite infection level and physiological stress in free‐living vertebrates. The use …

Permanent changes in the surrounding environment cause long-term stress in birds, which,
when lasting days or weeks, affects the activity of the immune system and increases …

Metals can cause oxidative stress by increasing the formation of reactive oxygen species
(ROS), when there are insufficient amount of antioxidants to defend against the growing …

Small resident bird species living at northern latitudes increase their metabolism in winter,
and this is widely assumed to improve their chances of survival. However, the relationship …

Body condition is an important concept in behaviour, evolution and conservation, commonly
used as a proxy of an individual's performance, for example in the assessment of …

Blood oxygen-carrying capacity is one of the important determinants of the amount of
oxygen supplied to the tissue per unit time and plays a key role in oxidative metabolism. In …

Blood parasites may act as modulators of their hosts' ecology, life histories and fitness. We
studied the prevalence of Plasmodium sp., Haemoproteus sp. and Leucocytozoon sp. and …

Body condition indices are increasingly applied in conservation to assess habitat quality,
identify stressed populations before they decline, determine effects of disturbances, and …

Oxidative stress is a key physiological mechanism underlying life-history tradeoffs. Here, I
use meta-analytic techniques to test whether sexual differences in oxidative balance are …

Haematological methods are widely utilised among avian ecologists as a means for
individual health assessment. However, the technical simplicity of some of the tests may …