The list of all known locality and host records from the literature on louse flies from Slovakia are summarized, with the addition of new collection data. New locality data are provided for five species. Three species are added to the Slovakian list:Icostaminor(Bigot in Thomson, 1858), which was erroneously cited for Moravia instead of Slovakia in the previous checklist, andOrnithophilametallica(Schiner, 1864) andOrnithomyachloropus(Bergroth, 1901), which were overlooked from the last checklist. As a result, the louse fly fauna of Slovakia increases to 19 species: 12 autochtonous species and seven rare, non-native species only occasionally imported to Slovakia or migrating to the country with their hosts. This is by far the largest regional fauna of Hippoboscidae in Central Europe, and matches the richest southern European faunas. In total, 78 host-parasite associations concerning 46 bird-host species from eight orders and nine species of mammals, including humans, have been found from a literature review in Slovakia. Two host-parasite associations are reported from Slovakia for the first time:Ornithomyaavicularia(Linnaeus, 1758) onPrunellamodularis(Linnaeus, 1758) (Aves: Prunellidae) andLipoptenafortisetosaMaa, 1965 onHomosapiensLinnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Hominidae).
Life-history theory predicts that current behaviour affects future reproduction, implying that animals should optimise their escape strategies to reflect fitness costs and benefits of premature escape. Both costs and benefits of escape may change temporally with important consequences for the evolution of escape strategies. Moreover, escape strategies of species may differ according to their positions on slow–fast pace of life gradients. We studied risk-taking in long-distance migratory animals, waders (Charadriiformes), during the annual cycle, i.e., breeding in Europe, stopover in the Middle East and wintering in tropical Africa. Phylogenetically informed comparative analyses revealed that risk-taking (measured as flight initiation distance, FID) changed significantly over the year, being lowest during breeding and peaking at stopover sites. Similarly, relationships between risk-taking and life-history traits changed among stages of the annual cycle. While risk-taking significantly decreased with increasing body mass during breeding, risk-taking–body mass relationship became marginally significant in winter and disappeared during migration. The positive trend of risk-taking along slow–fast pace of life gradient measured as adult survival was only found during breeding. The season-dependent relationships between risk-taking and life history traits suggest that migrating animals respond to fluctuating environments by adopting behavioural plasticity.