New study on the habitat selection of turtle doves in France

A new academic paper on the European turtle dove has just been published in the international journal Biological Conservation. The study is based on the analysis of breeding territories of 38 adult birds tracked with GPS devices in France in 2022 and 2023. More than 66,000 geolocations were analyzed, and 38 home ranges were modeled.

The study of habitat selection in these adult turtle doves provides essential knowledge for restoring high-quality breeding habitats for this threatened species. Two key landscape features were identified, and their optimal densities were estimated: small wooded features (hedgerows, tree alignments, or scrubs) and waterbodies (streams, ponds, wetlands).

A multi-scale analysis helped identify the best strategies for managing and restoring agricultural habitats to support turtle dove presence: 25% coverage of small wooded elements, evenly distributed within home ranges of 70 to 100 hectares.

This research is part of Yuping Ren’s PhD at the National Museum of Natural History  (Paris, France).

The next steps are:

• To evaluate the trade-offs in ecosystem services related to habitat restoration, such as production losses and gains in pollination and water regulation. This will be the focus of Yuping Ren’s work at the end of her PhD.
• To expand habitat selection analyses to a European scale, using data from more than 120 GPS-tracked individuals across France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Czechia, Romania, Serbia… and up to Moldova. This is the work being initiated by Lise Bartholus within HABITRACK.

Ren Y, Princé K, Bocher P, Champagnon D, Duriez O, Jiguet F (2025) Defining optimal small woody features and water densities to maximize European Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) occurrence in French agricultural landscapes. Biological Conservation. 309, 111302 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2025.111302