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New publication on passerine migration

Photo: Aron Hejdström 

Different birds use different strategies during migration. However, at some point most of them are forced to fly out over unsuitable habitats, sometimes where it is not even possible to land. This is the case for migratory passerines leaving southern Sweden during autumn migration. 
In a new study Sissel Sjöberg with colleagues look at factors affecting route choice, and which factors that affects the flight duration for the initial flight (the first 50km) across the Baltic Sea. As expected, winds were of dominating importance, both in route choice and in flight duration. More surprisingly, they observed birds departing on a longer flight across the Baltic to depart in a time frame just after sunset and that the flight duration further were affected by both cloudiness and fuel load.

The photo shows one of the robins equipped with a radio transmitter from the study. The automatic radiotelemetry system in Falsterbo makes it possible to follow it during its stay in the area, and depending on route choice, during its departure across the Baltic Sea. This to get a better understanding of stopover and departure behaviour in migratory passerines, and how they affect the overall migratory success.

The study: "Weather and fuel reserves determine departure and flight decisions in passerines migrating across the Baltic Sea" is published in Animal Behaviour.

New model on flapping flight

Nature has produced many formidable flyers and it is tempting to think that evolution has shaped them to be the ultimate flying machines. During the past half-century simple models for estimating flight performance of aircraft have been adopted to also represent animal flight.

However, in a new study, Marco Klein Heerenbrink, Christoffer Johansson and Anders Hedenström show that the aerodynamic efficiency of flying vertebrates has previously been overestimated by ignoring the effects of flapping wings - results that have implications for our understanding of optimal flight behaviour in animals and the use of flapping wings for propulsion in general.

To the paper: "Power of the wingbeat: modelling the effects of flapping wings in vertebrate flight".

New Seminar Group

from the left: Fredrik Andreasson, Gabriel Norevik, Christoffer Johansson & Emily O'Connor

After having done a great job Cecilia Nilsson and Tom Evans now leave the CAnMove Seminar Group.

Christoffer and Emily  will continue within the group together with two new members: Fredrik Andreasson and Gabriel Norevik.

 

Don’t hesitate to contact them if you have any ideas or questions about the seminars

Summer course: Animal Movement Analysis

For the third time, Computational Geo-Ecology at the University of Amsterdam is giving a summer course in Animal Movement Analysis. The course is held in Amsterdam between 6-10 July 2015, and online registration is now open.

Read more and register: http://ibed.uva.nl/news-events/events/events/events/content/folder/courses/2015/07/animal-movement-analysis.html

Party time?

Party time? No, rather another day at work for the radio telemetry researchers. We needed some more reference data for the direction finding system in Falsterbo, and what could be better than attaching transmitter tags to helium balloons and pick a nice and calm day for an excursion? Although many Falsterbo residents wondered what was going on, we successfully gathered transmitter signals from altitudes above 50 meters.

/Arne Andersson

Movement Ecology of Bats

Conference dinner at the Museum of Natural History.

Four members have just attended the “4^th International Berlin Bat Meeting: "Movement Ecology of Bats”, giving talks (Per Henningsson and Jonas Håkansson) and presenting a poster (Lasse Jakobsen). 

The conference had about 300 attendees and from a CAnMove perspective it was spot on. We have heard a great number of fascinating talks, many presenting tracking data using microdata-loggers to record GPS positions and many other variables. One study reported on bat movements where the bats also had microphones to record encounters with other bats, to show that they aggregate as they forage around the lake of Genezareth. Sharon Swartz, Brown University, gave a plenary about the recent work on skin properties and the function of inter-membrane muscles. We also had a very nice section about bat migration, where Liam McGuire talked about the network of receives that is put up in North America to study bird and bat migration. Other topics were movements and sociality and movement of bats in relation to the spreading of zoonotic disease.

The conference dinner was at the Museum of Natural History (see above), where our table was just under the head of the world’s tallest dinosaur having been mounted so far (with certificate from the Guinness book of records), and of course the museum’s crown jewels – the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx. 

On the morning before the conference started we also made a visit to the Berlin Botanic Garden, where especially the green houses can be recommended if you visit Berlin.

 //Anders Hedenström