GLOBALHOSP

The BIOLOGY of House SparrowS

A GloBal Research INITiative

Welcome to GlobalHOSP, a web site devoted to coordinating research and disseminating results on the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). This species has the broadest geographic distribution of any bird in the world. It has colonized every continent except Antarctica and has adapted extremely well to human activity. The species lives in a diverse array of climates from the tropics to the arctic. Because it has been introduced in many locales, populations vary considerably in their evolutionary history in the local habitat. Finally, the species is extremely easy to study since individuals take readily to artificial nest boxes and can be captured with either mist nets or seed-baited traps. Many scientists around the world have collected data on house sparrows in many different locales. We think this offers a tremendous opportunity for collaboration among researchers. On this web site we have organized three methods to foster more cooperative efforts to study these birds.

    HOSPnet

An e-mail community of researchers working on house sparrows. Its purpose is to share information, to request assistance, and to facilitate communication about cooperative research efforts. If interested in participating or contacting members of HOSPnet, please contact Marty Martin (lmartin [at] cas.usf.edu).

The HOSP Data Archive

 

A web site designed to disseminate data on house sparrows worldwide. Here we provide summary data on house sparrow biology in a variety of forms potentially useful to journalists, the public, or professional scientists. In addition, a portal is available that will allow searches of raw data provided by individual researchers explicitly to assist with comparative analyses. Please contact David Westneat (biodfw[at]uky.edu) for more information. [Under construction]

     

Calls for Collaboration

 

We think house sparrows have great potential for developing collaborative projects involving multiple sites. We have started this page with two potential projects in mind. Our goal is to recruit interested researchers so we can communicate about data collection and coordinate analyses. We encourage other researchers to send us similar ideas for collaboration and we will post them here.