Systematic Review

Methods

Literature Search Method

To determine the current focuses of primary and peer-reviewed research on European warbler migration, a systematic review was conducted using the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. An initial search for articles on European warbler migration was conducted by searching the terms ‘warbler migration’ using the ‘Title’ option of the Web of Science search engine. This had yielded a total of 108 results. Following the initial search, the results were refined using the Web of Science categories (‘Ornithology’) and Document Type categories (‘Article’). This excluded articles that were not primary articles and were not related to the field of ornithology. In addition, each article was screened manually for non-primary articles (ex. reviews, summaries, etc.). After these refinements, the number of results had lowered to 60 articles. Next, the results were refined further to include only studies on the migration of European warblers. This was done through manually screening and by using the ‘Countries/territories’ option to limit to studies conducted by European countries (Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, England, Switzerland, Spain, Ukraine, Scotland, Wales, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Greece, Finland, Czech Republic, Russia). The amount of literature found was 39 articles. This whole process is shown in the PRISMA diagram (Appendix A).

Analysis of Literature

The 39 studies from the Web of Science search results were screened and categorized with regard to a number of factors (Appendix B). The results were coded in terms of the topic of the study, the species studied, the migratory season of study and the method of capture. Lastly, these articles, provided information which identified gaps in the research of the four factors.