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1. Comparative studies about the relationships between vital rates and ecological traits at the community level are conspicuously lacking for most taxa because estimating vital rates requires detailed demographic data. Identifying relationships between vital rates and ecological traits could help to better understand ecological and evolutionary demographic mechanisms that lead to interspecific differences in vital rates. 2. We use novel dynamic N-mixture models for counts to achieve this for a whole avian community comprising 53 passerine species, while simultaneously accounting for density dependence and environmental stochasticity in recruitment and survival and, importantly, correcting our inferences for imperfect detection. Demographic stochasticity is taken into account in the form of the binomial and Poisson distributions describing survival events and number of recruits. We then explore relationships between estimated demographic parameters (i.e., vital rates) and ecological traits related to migration patterns, diet, habitat and nesting location of each species. 3. The relative importance of recruitment and adult survival as contributors to population growth varied greatly among species, and interspecific differences in vital rates partly reflected differences in ecological traits. Migratory mode was associated with interspecific differences in population growth and density dependence. Resident species had higher population growth rates than long- and short-distance migrants. We found no relationships between diet and population growth rate. Habitat differences were associated with different growth rates: alpine, wetland and farmland species had lower population growth rates than forest species. Differences in population growth rates among nesting locations showed that breeding habitat is essential for population dynamics. 4. Our study reveals relationships between ecological traits and contributions of vital rates to population growth and suggests ways in which patterns of population growth fluctuations in a community might be determined by life history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating survival and recruitment over large spatial scales is extremely challenging because it requires 'expensive' demographic data from marked animals. Dynamic N-mixture models (Dail & Madsen ) yield estimates of abundance, apparent survival, recruitment and detection probability from simple counts replicated in space and time, as frequently collected in monitoring programmes all over the world. However, the vital rates are assumed to be density- independent and constant over time, arguably unrealistic assumptions in many situations., We evaluated the performance of the traditional dynamic N-mixture model from simulated data generated with density dependence and environmental stochasticity in the vital rates. We then developed a series of more advanced models that take density-dependent vital rates and environmental stochasticity into account and assessed whether these models provide accurate estimates of vital rates, strength of density dependence and levels of environmental stochasticity., We found that the traditional Dail-Madsen model produced accurate estimates of abundances and vital rates when the assumptions were met, but not when vital rates were subject to density dependence and environmental stochasticity., Accurate parameter estimates were generally obtained when the data generation matched the data analysis model, but accuracy was substantially reduced otherwise. Interestingly, accurate estimates of abundance and detection were obtained from all models, regardless of the data generation model. Shorter time series from more sites yielded estimates of similar accuracy as longer series from fewer sites., The new dynamic N-mixture models represent a promising basis for developing integrated population models that combine data from different sources to get insights into population dynamics of species over large areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]