The Algerian wetlands play a vital role in upholding biodiversity and ensuring ecological balance. They face many anthropogenic environmental pressures, such as pollution, habitat degradation, and climate change. These pressures negatively affect many duck species, even making some vulnerable. This continued degradation highlights the need to identify the various threats affecting aquatic birds while looking at potential adaptive responses—behavioral changes, shifts in reproductive strategies, and/or diet. We conducted reproductive monitoring along with collecting and analyzing diet data from several duck species and presented these results to get a better understanding of aquatic bird ecology and adaptations to anthropogenic pressures.

Aquatic birds encounter countless threats from both natural (e.g., parasitism, predation, extreme events) and anthropogenic (e.g., poaching) sources. These pressures are compounded by the presence of invasive species (e.g., mosquitofish, carp) that can alter the submerged vegetation community and reduce food sources such as macroinvertebrate populations that are important to these birds for food. To withstand these pressures, aquatic birds have been observed behaviorally adapting their characteristics through nesting in elevated and/or dense vegetative sites to reduce predator detection and utilizing specific diets (e.g., waterfowl feeding primarily on seeds from submerged vegetation). These adaptations reflect resilience to disturbance, but their continued existence is intimately linked to habitat quality and the maintenance/restoration of aquatic habitats. If we are unsuccessful in managing these systems, their future is uncertain. There is an immediate need for conservation actions, including the protection of wetlands, establishment of invasive species controls, enforcement against poaching, and raising local awareness and stewardship. A comprehensive and sustainable approach is required to protect these systems and the biodiversity they support.