CAnMove - Centre for Animal Movement Research

CAnMove on ice

2012-01-29T15:00:00.004+01:00

The last few days the lakes of Skåne have frozen to allow ice-skating, and for the keen CAnMove co-ordinator Susanne Åkesson and development engineer Arne Andersson this is an opportunity that cannot be missed. On the photo they can bee seen skating leisurely in tailwind along the south shore of Krankesjön, some 20 km east of Lund, both outfitted in smart long-distance skates of top-brand. They could experience the real effect of wind, as they had to go back along the north shore of the lake in a moderate head-wind to make the roundtrip, which caused them to reflect about how winds affect migratory birds. Another analogy between skating and bird flight is the relative ease by which humans can traverse distance on skates at a relatively low cost, as compared with for example walking/running, crawling or swimming. The analogy is with the lift to drag ratio of flight, a measure on the efficiency of locomotion, which the ice-skating CAnmOve reps out on the ice felt as relatively high. The ice was perfect today (see picture), and hopefully it will remain so for some more time.

Climate change affects flight speed in albatrosses

2012-01-17T20:04:00.002+01:00

A new study published in the current issue of Science reports about climate change related effects in flight behavior in wandering albatrosses, breeding on Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Due to climate change related phenomena the mean wind speed has increased in the southern oceans, between 50 and 60 S. Albatrosses use dynamic soaring, which is a way of extracting energy by soaring in the wind gradient in the boundary layer of the sea. The stronger the wind, the faster the albatrosses can fly. A french team, lead by Henri Weimerskirch, has studied wandering albatrosses on the Crozet Islands during 20 years. During this period the winds have increased, and the scientists have been able to measure related properties in the albatrosses. The albatrosses now forage further to the south, their flight speed has increased from 10 to 12 m/s, and their daily travel rate during foraging journeys has increased from 500 to 700 m/s. Better foraging success has led to improved breeding success, and the albatrosses have increased by about 1 kg in body mass. It seems as if we here have a positive effect related to the ongoing climate change, but the scientists mention that the predicted scenario of wind change will come to a deterioration further down the trail, so the observed effects may be temporary. It is very nice, though, to see a study reporting an association between climate change and flight speed.

Birds and butterflies don´t keep up with the climate change

2012-01-12T13:59:00.001+01:00

During the last 20 years, the temperature has increased. New results published in "Nature Climate Change" now shows that both birds and butterflies follow the northward shift in temperature, but unforunately not at the same speed as the climate. To make it even more complex, the authors, which include Åke Lindström from CAnMove/BECC, also shows that butterflies adapt faster than birds to the climate change which in turn may cause a lack of food supply for birds in the future.

We wish you all a merry christmas!

2011-12-22T12:25:00.000+01:00

The CAnMove program was launched July 2008 and we have now covered about 1/3 of the program period. Year 2011 has been a full of activities, science discussions, research progress and communication, some of which you will find high-lighted below.

MEDIA & OUTREACH
In 2011 our new webpage was released. Thanks again for all your help with input and ideas of content and design. We see this as our communication platform, which will continue to develop during the program period. Some of the new parts on the web-page were for instance: short science films produced in collaboration with journalist Joakim Lindhé (with support from Lars Salvius Stiftelsen to S. Åkesson). CAnMove members participated in a TV program for “Vetenskapens Värld” in Swedish Television with a program about bird tracking technology (project run by journalist Joakim Lindhé with financial support from FORMAS).

Other new actions was the field blog where CAnMove members reported from their field work, and a nation-wide moon watching project, which was run in collaboration with Swedish Ornithological Society (SOF). A spectacular Music show “Music of Migration” was part of the Migration course to which Lund University employees were invited.

COURSES & CONFERENCES
The international PhD student course “Ecology of animal migration” was this year coordinated by Rachel Muheim and Maria Eng Johnsson and attracted 36 participants, from many different countries. Thanks to the participants for their interesting contributions, active and friendly attitude during the course. You all make it worthwhile to invest the work in organizing the course! Many lecturers were invited and we are grateful for all high-quality and stimulating contributions to the course by visiting as well as Lund-based lecturers and student teachers! Thank You!

The internal CAnMove conference were held at Hotel Norregård in Falsterbo, at which two of the CAnMove Science Advisory Board members Prof. Marilyn Ramenofsky, Davis and Prof. Steven Repperert, Massachusetts were participating. The creative brainstorming event and feedback were most valuable, and the Steering committee is very pleased with all creative input to the program outline. Thanks to you all! Next conference will be held in early spring 2013.

A conference on animal migration at Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Research was held in June and was organized by the Royal Academy of Sciences (program coordinator Thomas Alerstam) to which some CAnMove members were invited. Much stimulating discussions and excellent organization, which we are much grateful for!

In August postdoc Sophia Engel organized a workshop on “insect flight”, while a workshop on “Beyond the climate envelope” was held in collaboration with BECC, the workshop was organized by Catherine Davey. The meeting was attended by members from both programs as well as by invited lecturers and was very stimulating for the discussions on effects of climate change. Well done!

POSTDOCS
Two new postdocs were hired within CAnMove – Sylvie Tesson (supervised by Karin Rengefors and Katarina Hedlund) with focus on Community metagenomics of Antarctic Protists and Brianne Addison (supervised by Helena Westerdahl, Dennis Hasselqvist and Jan-Åke Nilsson) who works with Immunological and physiological adaptations to migration.

Our first three postdocs (Sophia Engel, Ben Chapman and Miriam Liedvogel) have all ended their postdoc supported by CAnMove, but both Miriam and Ben have received funds to stay here for some more time, financed from other grants. And we are very happy that they have decided to stay and work within the CAnMove program for a bit longer. Most welcome!

INTERNAL INFORMATION
CAnMove has initiated a gender equality group, coordinated by Rachel Muheim, with support from a team of female scientists and students. The first meeting was held in December 2011.

Some CAnMove members were participating in the local running competition “Lundaloppet” in one of the two CAnMove teams. We aim at having more than 2 teams in spring 2012. We will continue with the CAnMove breakfasts and seminars in 2012.

We like to thank all members contributing the research and creativity of the CAnMove program! We are looking forward to a new stimulating year 2012 and would like to encourage you all to approach any of the employees or the steering committee or the coordinator with suggestions and ideas.

In time for the Christmas celebration this year, the special Volume of Oikos on partial migration is published, in which a number of review articles are included. This is as a result of the CAnMove workshop “Partial migration” organized by Ben Chapman and co-workers last autumn. We are very pleased with the outcome and congratulate Ben et al. for this successful publication!

The Ecology and Evolution of Partial Migration

2011-12-12T16:19:00.014+01:00

Migratory elk (photo: Holger Spaedkte, University of Alberta)

Partial migration, where populations of animals are composed of both migratory and resident individuals, is widespread in nature, and taxonomically diverse. Last year CAnMove hosted a two day symposium into the ecology and evolution of partial migration, and from this workshop we compiled a number of original research articles to create a special thematic issue of Oikos focussing upon this fascinating phenomenon. The papers in the thematic highlight the breadth of work carried out in this field of migration biology, and showcase exciting new research into various aspects of partial migration.

To begin with we present a review of the current literature, and discuss what is known about the ecology and evolution of partial migration and what the future may hold (Chapman et al. 2011). Next, Francisco Pulido presents a revised threshold model of migration, which aims to understand the proximate basis of individual migratory tendency. Pulido revises the current threshold model to include environmental effects (Pulido 2011). Following this, CAnMove’s Anna Nilsson and coauthors (2011) investigate the physiological adaptations of migration in the partially migratory blue tit, showing that residents have a higher basal metabolic rate than migrants in this species. Next, Francesca Cagnacci and coauthors (2011) analyse data on roe deer migration from 5 different countries to understand the environmental correlates of partial migration. They also importantly highlight that partial migration is on a continuum between full residency and full migration.

Partially migratory manakins (photo: Alice Boyle, University of Western Ontario)

The next series of papers investigate the ecological drivers of partial migration. Alice Boyle presents a community-level test of the ‘limited foraging opportunity’ hypothesis, and finds support across a range of Neotropical bird species for the importance of this mechanism (Boyle 2011). Atle Mysterud and co-authors (2011) show that a range of ecological factors are important in shaping patterns of red deer partial migration, and also show evidence for negative density-dependent migration in this species. Next, Hanna Kokko theoretically models the role of intraspecific competition in facultative partial migration, illustrating how important the strength of the prior residency effect is in predicting which individuals migrate (Kokko 2011). The following paper focuses upon the consequences of partial migration. Jakob Brodersen of CAnMove presents a long term data analysis of partially migratory roach, a freshwater fish, and the effects of this migration on an ecosystem level (Brodersen et al. 2011).

The next series of papers look at how anthropogenic influences can affect patterns of partial migration. Cort Griswold presents a theoretical population model of partial migration which is applied to scenarios of environmental change (Griswold et al. 2011). Mark Hebblewhite shifts from theory to empirical data, and using demographic data analysis shows how human impacts can affect migrants and residents differently by altering the costs and benefits of migration vs. residency in ungulates (Hebblewhite & Merrill 2011).

Partially migratory crabs, which migrate to breed but sometimes forgo breeding (and therefore migration): Photo: Allison Shaw, Princeton University

The final paper broadens the classic definition of partial migration to include animals that migrate to breed, but sometimes forgo breeding (Shaw & Levin 2011). Allison Shaw presents what may be the first theoretical investigation of this kind of partial migration.

All in all, I think we have something for everyone! A diverse and interesting issue for a diverse and interesting subject. We are really pleased that the thematic is out in time for Christmas, and thanks again to all the CAnMovians that helped out with the workshop or the thematic production! God Jul!

Ben, Christer, Jan-Åke & Lasse

CAnMove Conference, day 2

2011-12-07T12:15:00.000+01:00

After a good nights sleep, a quick walk in Falsterbo and some breakfast it was time to discuss how CAnMove can improve in the future. We discussed how to make PhD students and associated researchers more connected to CAnMove, how to make the action groups going and how to communicate all the cool research that´s going on within CAnMove, among other things.

After this discussion it was time for Mikael Ekvall to talk more about the work to track small animals, in this case daphnias, with nano technology. You can see one example of how it can look like here

Mikael shows us a movie of nanotracked daphnias

Steven Reppert held an interesting talk about monarch butterflies and how they use circadian clock and sun compass during migration. One thing he mentioned was that they have found out that the circadian clock that the butterflies uses for navigation is situated in the antennae instead of in the brain, as was thought before. Rachel Muheim continued the orientation/navigation theme and told us about magnetic compass orientation in migratory birds, and many other animals that also uses this way to find their way.

Steven talks about time-compensated sun compass orientation

Now it´s time for lunch together and then the bus will drive us back to the Ecology building in Lund. It has been a conference filled with good and interesting talks and interactive discussions. Thanks to Hotel Norregård that served us with everything we needed and to all the participants that interacted and gave us good tips and advices on how to make CAnMove even better in the future!

CAnMove Conference in Falsterbo

2011-12-06T16:17:00.001+01:00

Today, about thirty PhD students, post docs, senior researchers and administrative staff participate in the second CAnMove Conference, since the start in 2008. At the last conference three members of our Scientific Advisory Board joined us, and this time we have the pleasure to see the two new members, Steven Reppert and Marilyn Ramenofsky, here.

Steven Reppert is professor of neuroscience and founding chair of the department of neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Marilyn Ramenofsky is adjunct professor at the department of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at the University of California.

Marilyn Ramenofsky gave us a small glimps of her work

Today we have heard Anna Runemark talk about the Lidar and spectroscopy of damselflies, Christoffer Johansson has tought us about the wing difference between insects, birds and bats and Marilyn Ramenofsky told us about her research on regulation of endocrine, metabolic and behavioural systems in migratory birds

Anders Hedenström and Steven Reppert discuss the possibility of letting butterflies fly in the wind tunnel

After some coffee Max Lundberg and Keith Larson talked about the willow warbler where the subspecies migrate to different areas in Africa and then it was time for some fantastic lunch!

After this energy boost we continued the conference by listening to Catherine Davey that informed us about how the climate change affect the Swedish birds. Anders Hedenström told us about the swift "Argus argus" flight and then Cecilia Nilsson let us know more about how migration speed in passerines differ between spring and autumn migration.

Interested audience at the beautiful conference hall in Falsterbo

Susanne Åkesson then ended the todays talks by informing us about CAnMove and our goals.

Now we´re having some brainstorming groups, discussing the CAnMove future and tonight we will have some more fantastic food and then a good nights sleep.Tomorrow we will listen to new interesting talks and have more interactive discussion about movement and CAnMove!

Susanne Åkesson told us more about CAnMove

Documentary on CAnMove research!

2011-11-28T11:14:00.004+01:00

Thanks to modern light logger technique it’s now possible to track individual birds during their long migrations. Thus, questions like Where do they go? How fast do they fly? How do they find their way? are likely to soon be answered. For example, earlier this year it was discovered that the great snipe (Gallinago media) can fly to Africa non-stop at an average speed of 80km/h, (see blog entry from May) - a previously unknown strategy in bird migration!
However, despite the technical advances it is still hard work to get results. During 2011, journalist Joakim Lindhé and photographer Per Anders Rudelius followed some CAnMove researchers in their quest to find out more about the enigmas of bird migration. See the documentary on “Vetenskapens värld” tonight 20:00 on SVT2!

Short CAnMove update

2011-11-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

Now the international PhD course ”Ecology of Animal migration” is over for the 6^th time and it has been two intensive, but really interesting weeks with intense and stimulating interactions between participants. It has been inspiring to meet all new young scientists and to hear about their contributions to the field of animal movement research. We hope to see as many as possible of you again and we also hope that the students who could not come this year will come next time instead. Thanks to all lecturers and teachers for their enthusiastic participation and support during the course – it is a real pleasure to hear good words from the audience in favor of lecturer’s contributions! Thanks also to Rachel Muheim and Maria Eng Johnsson who organized the course this year!

During the course we also invited course participants, lecturers and employees at Lund University to the music and popular science performance “Music of migration”. The spectacular show and memorable event was performed by ecologist Professor Theunis Piersma, University of Groningen, who talked about the Netherlands extensive agriculture and its effect of wader population dynamics, vulnerability during breeding and migration behavior exemplified by godwits. He also covered effects of land reclaim efforts on stopover sites in the Yellow Sea area putting migrating red knot at risk in China. The very skilled Dutch musician (and artist) Sytze Pruiksma added films, photographs and music to the cross-disciplinary show and the improvised excitement by this classically trained percussionist underlined the importance and urgency in the messages sent to the audience. Together they enthralled the audience for almost 1,5 hour. From the audience: “A true highlight event of the year!”

New members of the CAnMove principal investigator team have been invited and have resulted in an increase from 14 to 16 people. The two new PIs are Rachel Muheim, Functional Ecology and Christoffer Johansson, Evolutionary Ecology at the Department of Biology. We are happy that the two young and very successful scientists accepted our invitation to be more actively associated with the program and we hope they will enjoy the work with CAnMove.

Rachel Muheim was one of the scientists within CAnMove that this year received funding from VR (Vetenskapsrådet) for scientists in the beginning of their career and with this money she will continue her work studying the magnetic compass in birds that migrate. Congratulaions and good luck!

// Susanne

Locomotion studies at migration course

2011-10-21T16:14:00.004+02:00

The international PhD-course on migration ecology is currently taking place at Lund. Nearly 40 students are attending from a great number of countries. After introductory lectures and presentations by the students themselves, the course now entered the lecture curriculum of a first day of Locomotion. Colin
Pennycuick lectures about migration performance calculations, Anders Hedenström on approaches for studying animal flight, Florian Muijres on fluid dynamics of flying/swimming, and Christoffer Johansson about animal swimming. The afternoon was devoted to a practical, where flight related m

orphology was measured for a number of (dead) birds, and then data then used to calculate characteristic performance measures about migration by using the software "Flight" that Colin Pennycuick has developed. The pictures show Colin Pennycuick advising students at the course, and the "published" results on the white board (to the right).

International PhD course has begun!

2011-10-18T11:08:00.000+02:00

This morning it was time for the sixth version of "Ecology of Animal migration" to start, organised by CAnMove. This is an international PhD course and today we met 36 students from 17 different countries! We have also invited world leading lecturers and are expecting two weeks of interesting talks and discussions.

Newly arrived students, waiting for the course to start.

The whole class is gathered for the first lecture

Course assistant Rachel Muheim welcomes all students and lecturers

Today we will listen to Thomas Alerstam who talks about the history of animal migration and Susanne Åkesson who talks about Migration acology and CAnMove. The rest of the day we will listen to the students where they will share their work with the rest of the group. The day ends with some pizza together.

Moonwatching high

2011-10-14T13:17:00.002+02:00

The last two evenings/nights Susanne and I have watched migrating birds against the face of the moon. The weather has been clear and with moderate winds aloft. We recorded the position of entry and exit on the moon's surface, imaging the moon is a clock. On Wednesday we observed 62 birds during one hour, and yesterday (Thursday) we noted 28 birds/hour. The directions were quite consistent towards the SW, and the observations suggest there was quite heavy migration traffic. We could hear scattered calls from redwings (Turdus lilacus) and robins (Erithacus rubecula), and last night also a flock of barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) was heard migrating. The moon will still be bright for a few more nights, and we challenge everybody to beat our current record of seeing 62 birds during one hour!

Anders Hedenström

Moon watching in "Naturmorgon"

2011-10-06T10:15:00.000+02:00

For those who like to get up really early on weekends, this Saturday's "Naturmorgon" visits CAnMove and the roof of the Ecology house to practice some Moon watching!
If you think 06.14 is a bit early, you can of course also listen to the programme afterwards on Naturmorgon's web.

Course in R

2011-09-27T10:50:00.001+02:00

The 12–16 December 2011, there will be a course in R, available for all CAnMovians. Read more and register: http://www.geneco.se/Courses/Autumn-2011/Introduction-to-using-R.

Workshop on Climate Change

2011-09-21T09:43:00.000+02:00

10-12 October there will be a workshop called "Beyond the Climate Envelope" and there will be talks and discussions about how to find new approaches for detecting climate impacts and predicting the future. The workshop is a cooperation between CAnMove and BECC (Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate).
This workshop is open for registration until friday (23 September) and more information about the workshop and how to register you can find here.

Moon watching has begun

2011-09-13T23:10:00.000+02:00

Patrik talks about LIDAR

The start of the ”Moon watch” project was celebrated on the roof of the Ecology Building Friday 9 September. A group of ca 30 interested students, scientists and personnel visited the event, which started by a short walk to the Atomic Physics Department where Patrik Lundin and Mikkel Brydegaard demonstrated the Florescence LIDAR and the principles behind optic remote detection of insects and birds.

Thereafter the group joined the rest of the team on the roof of the Ecology Building where the tracking radar was demonstrated by Johan Bäckman and hotdogs and drinks were served to the interested audience.

Johan demonstrates the radar

Some clouds were covering the moon, but now and then the moon could be observed by telescopes and successfully at least one bird passing the moon was detected.

Waiting for the moon to show

Apart from that a few echoes of migrating songbirds, including a common swift was recorded by the tracking radar, confirming that migration was taking action. In the end of the evening the sky over LTH was filled with fireworks (as if ordered for the event…) making a very memorable exclamation to the first night of the moon watch project.

The radar "saw" a lot more birds than we did this night

The CAnMove personnel lead by Helena and Johan made the evening a very pleasant and exciting event! Thank you!

Susanne

CAnMove at Innovation in Mind 2011

2011-09-01T22:35:00.002+02:00

Lund University at night.

CAnMove coordinator will participate in theopening of the 2011 Innovation in Mind conference at Lund University coveringthe topic: Is innovation what you think it is? The conference will open to themusic of Björn J:son Lind and at the same time a preview of the film production “Fåglarnassvarta låda” covering new tracking technology to study bird movements by journalist Joakim Lindhé will be shown. The conference will beheld at a temporary conference venue at the University building 14-15 September. This years conference focuson social innovations and alternative views of the concept of innovation.Participants may expect a spectacular event.

Susanne

Remote nocturnal bird classification by spectroscopy

2011-09-01T22:10:00.001+02:00

The LIDAR bus at the field site during the Kullaberg campaign May 2010.
Photo: Mikkel Brygdegaard.

In a recent paper by P. Lundin et al. (2011; doi:10.1364/AO.50.003396)published in the July issue of Applied Optics a team of scientists from two ofthe Linnaeus environments at Lund University, Lund Laser Centre and CAnMove,report on new optical methods at a wide range of wavelengths used for remote birdclassification. The team applied a variety of methods including eye-safefluorescence and depolarization lidar techniques, passive scatteringspectroscopy, and infrared (IR) spectroscopy in the field campaign at Kullabergspring 2010. In this paper the team has refined the previously presented methodof remotely classifying birds by using laser-induced beta-keratin fluorescence.Phenomena of excitation quenching were studied in the laboratory and weretheoretically discussed in detail in the paper. It is shown how the orderedmicrostructures in bird feathers induce structural "colours" in theIR region with wavelengths of around 3-6 mu m. We show that transmittance inthis region depends on the angle of incidence of the transmitted light in aspecies-specific way and that the transmittance exhibits a close correlation tothe spatial periodicity in the arrangement of the feather barbules. Furthermore,we present a method by which the microstructure of feathers can be monitored ina remote fashion by utilization of thermal radiation and the wing beating ofthe bird.

The application of these remote techniques inbird migration studies is novel and shows a high potential to finally resolvethe question what bird species are flying above in a pitch dark night sky. Ifind it exciting to see how CAnMove in this innovative way can contribute todevelopment and application of new technology and how the field of animalmovement research may benefit from these findings.

Susanne

Welcome to CAnMove activities

2011-08-27T20:26:00.007+02:00

Very welcome back after the summer break and field work! I hope your summer was relaxing and enjoyable.

There are a number of upcoming CAnMove activities that I hope will interest you all. Please, make sure to sign up for the meetings and workshops that are planned, and do not miss the new Moon watching project and associated events! More information is available at our home page.

This is the list to remember:

1. Symposium on “Insect flight” including CAnMove BBQ, 29-30 August.

2. New “Moon watch” project is initiated and celebrated with a social event and associated technology information (LIDAR show at the Physics Department). We will meet at the Ecology Roof 9 September at 19.30h, visit the LIDAR lab at the Physics Department and then return to the Ecology Building roof to observe nocturnal bird migration and socialize. “Varmkorv etc” and drinks will be served. All CAnMovians are Welcome!!

3. BECC/CAnMove symposium “Beyond the Climate Envelope”, 10-12 October.

4. Migration course for PhD students will start 18 October and run for 12 days. You are all welcome to visit lectures at the course.

All the best!

Susanne

Genetics of migration – perspectives and challenges

2011-08-24T15:59:00.004+02:00

In a diversity of organisms, closely related species, or even various populations of the same species exhibit strikingly different migratory behaviours, spanning from intercontinental movements to complete residency. We know that a significant proportion of phenotypic variance in migratory traits has a genetic basis, and migratory traits are under strong selection and can change within few generations.

But we still don't understand which genes are responsible for variable expression of specific migratory traits, such as migratory direction, timing and migratory distance? How many genes are involved in variation of migratory strategies? What is the magnitude of their effects?

Given the revolutionary technological achievements in the field of genomics, we think that this can be a turning point for the field, and finally allow us to evolve migratory genetics from phenotypic to molecular approaches enabling us to incorporate genetic architecture into our understanding of migratory traits.

Thus, we thought this is a great time to synthesise and review the state-of-the art in the field in an opinion paper (doi:10.1016/j.tree.2011.07.009).

Our review covers a diverse range of taxa (sketching key studies currently carried out in insects, fish and birds) with focus on different technical aspects, experimental paradigms, and presents the various methodological approaches ready to be applied to study migration in order to make major advances in this research field.

We hope that this paper will contribute to providing the necessary forum to enhance discussion in this newly emerging field, encourage interdisciplinary dialogue, foster collaborations and promote debate.

New Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation

2011-08-24T08:32:00.000+02:00

During summer CAnMove member Rachel Muheim got appointed Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation "in recognition for her research into light-dependent magnetoreception and how migratory birds navigate".

Rachel has been working with orientation and navigation in birds since the mid-90s and is now assistant professor in the department of Biology, Lund University. Find out more about her research here.

To boldly go: Animal personality and migration

2011-07-21T22:22:00.003+02:00

Roach, a common cyprinid fish (photo: Jakob Brodersen)

Until quite recently personality was considered to be a uniquely human characteristic. Yet many studies now show that individual behavioural variation analogous to personality can be found in a diverse range of other animals, from birds to fish to ants. Animal personality has been linked to many important ecological processes involving movement, such as dispersal, but few studies have studied how personality traits can influence migratory behaviour in animals.

In a study recently published in Ecology Letters (see here), we investigated whether a common personality trait - boldness (an individual’s propensity to take risks) – influences the migratory behaviour of a widespread fish, the roach. Roach show an interesting form of migratory behaviour known as partial migration, which means that only a fraction of the population migrates out of shallow lakes overwinter into the connecting streams, and the rest remain resident the whole year around in the lake. We caught 460 fish prior to migration in two consecutive years and first quantified their risk-taking behaviour, and then followed their migratory behaviour using passive telemetry. We found that in both years individual boldness influenced migratory tendency in roach, with bold fish being more likely to migrate than shy fish. This data suggests that an extremely widespread personality trait in animals can have important ecological consequences via influencing individual-level migratory behaviour.

Why bold fish are more likely to migrate is an interesting question. One idea is that bold fish are more at risk of predation, and so when the food resources are low in the winter they migrate to refuge in the streams where predators are scarce, and only return to the lake when food availability increases in the spring. Another hypothesis is that bold fish are also more exploratory, and more likely to undertake the risky migratory journey into potentially new and unusual habitats when the benefits of living in the lake decline over winter. Work is underway to test some of these ideas, so watch this space!

/Ben

New migration strategy found in Great Snipes

2011-05-25T10:04:00.002+02:00

Great Snipe. Photo: Patrik Olofsson

Virtually nothing is known about the migration routes and wintering habitats of the enigmatic but endangered great snipe (Gallinago media). We tracked great snipes using minute data loggers to reveal their yearly movements. To our surprise, the snipes made exceptionally long and speedy non-stop flights, traveling directly from Scandinavia into Africa (6000 km) in 2-3 days. En route they not only crossed deserts and seas but also wide areas of favorable feeding habitat. As migrants normally travel in shorter flight steps when possibilities for re-fueling are available, the spectacular great snipe flights represent a previously unknown strategy in bird migration.

You can find abstract and contact information to the authors here

Data logger. Photo: Raymond Klaassen

Snipe with logger. Photo: Raymond Klaassen

//Raymond

The first swift has returned!

2011-05-13T22:01:00.000+02:00

Yesterday the first swift returned to the colony on the roof of the Ecology Building! This swift is one of those that have been wearing a light logger during the migration season and now is ready to give us some answers about where it has been during the winter. To learn more about the swift migration research, click here.

If you want to have your own swift colony in your garden you can learn more about how to build swift-houses here (only in Swedish).

Today prof. Anders Hedenström has talked about how swifts can fly so fast, they can actually fly faster than 100 km/hour. This is possible due to their extreme wing construction. Click here to listen to the interview made by "Vetenskapsradion" (in Swedish).

Tomorrow prof. Susanne Åkesson will participate in "Kossornas planet" (also in Swedish) and talk more about swifts and their life style.

Effects of landscape context on populations of Bumblebees

2011-05-13T21:35:00.000+02:00

On Friday (May 13) at 13.00, Anna Persson is defending her thesis ”Effects of landscape context on populations of bumblebees” in Blue Hall, Ecology Building. In it she document severe losses of bumblebees, in particular species with above ground nests and small colonies, in intensively farmed landscapes. This can be understood in the context of animal movement, because different bumblebee species utilize landscapes at different spatial scales and may thus be differently sensitive to the increased spatial and temporal variation in nectar and pollen resources in these landscapes. In addition she demonstrates that the loss of pollinators may have secondary consequences for the pollination of wildflowers in agricultural landscapes.

CAnMove joined Lundaloppet

2011-05-09T23:50:00.000+02:00

CAnMove joined Lund´s city race "Lundaloppet" May 9 with two teams (five persons in each team). We started the day by having lunch in the sun at "Stadsparken" and after some talk about tactic etc we went to the starting point. All members of the two teams ran in the 10 km class and all finished the race within an hour.

Congratulations to our new CAnMove member Gerit Pfuhl that ran really fast and came on 7th place of 566 women running in the 10 km class and thanks to all CAnMovians that signed up for the teams and made Lundaloppet to a new CAnMove tradition!

Sandra Chiriac, Miriam Liedvogel, Max Lundberg, Staffan Bensch, Maria Eng-Johnsson, Keith Larson and Sieglinde Kundisch. In the photo we´re missing Gerit Pfuhl, Tom Evans and Erica Eng.

Prize to CAnMove member from "Kungliga Fysiografiska Sällskapet"

2011-05-06T10:42:00.001+02:00

Yesterday our principal investigator Helena Westerdahl received 410 000 SEK from "Kungliga Fysiografiska Sällskapet" in Lund for her immunological studies on birds. She focuses on migrating birds, the different viruses they carry and how their immune defense look like.

You can find more information about Helena and her work here

Mini-symposium on Animal Flight next week

2011-04-21T13:12:00.000+02:00

In accordance with the dissertation of Florian Muijres on 28 April, CanMove will organize a mini-symposium on “Animal Flight” that will be held the next day Friday 29 April at 14.00h in Vitmossan (Tundran):

Mini-symposium on Animal Flight

Friday 29 April at 14.00–16.30h

Vitmossan, Ecology building

Biofluiddynamics of flight as an inspiration for design

David Lentink, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

On the equivalent of a flying brick

Aerodynamics of beetle flight

Sophia Engel, Lund University

Flight muscles

(exact title will follow later)

Tom Daniel, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

You are all very welcome!

CAnMove Symposium on Insect Flight

2011-04-21T10:56:00.003+02:00

Our series of CAnMove symposia continues! Take a note in your calendars for the 29-30^th August 2011. These two days will be packed with exciting talks about one of the most successful groups of animals – insects!

Insects are model organisms for pretty much everything in biological research and therefore offer themselves to our current initiative to foster an integrated approach to the study of flight behavior.

Animal flight links a series of fundamental processes within both the physical and biological sciences: aerodynamics and biomechanics, physiological ecology, functional morphology, and evolutionary ecology, to name just a few. Therefore, our programme will cover a wide array of topics, and a number of experts in their fields have already committed to present their research - have a look at our (preliminary) programme that can be found here.

The symposium will be held in the Ecology Building. We very much welcome all people fascinated by the topic of insect flight and all CAnMove members to participate. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to present and discuss their work with a talk or a poster presentation - there will be ample opportunity for interaction and general discussion with all participants.

Registration: Attendance of the symposium is free, if you want to attend, please register here. The deadline for applications is July 15th.

Further information can be found on the CAnMove page, this page will be regularly updated.

We are looking forward to an exciting meeting, welcome!

Sophia, Anders and Erik

Easter crafts and arts!

2011-04-11T10:31:00.001+02:00

Last Friday quite a few CAnMovians gathered in the technical lab to “påskpyssla” and have a beer. One of the missions was to manufacture swift nests for the nest boxes in the attic. Hopefully these start-kit-nests will help attract some more birds to the Ecology house colony later this spring.

There was also a competition in creating “the most flyable bird”, “the most innovative creation” and the “the most aesthetically pleasing bird”. The birds’ aerial skills were tested in a miniature wind tunnel, but regretfully none of the birds really left the ground. Eventually one bird did start to shiver its wings in an attempt to take off and so we had our winner! Not surprisingly…it was Anders Hedenström, head of the flight lab. Other proud winners were Åke Lindström, Petra Carlsson and Staffan Bensch who won “the jury’s choice” for his nicely crafted birds feet made of “piprensare”. Staffan later told us that he was inspired by a Japanese visiting researcher who could fold a perfect origami-bird out of just one paper.

Thanks to all who joined and helped with the nests!

Bat and bird flight spectacular

2011-04-06T22:51:00.007+02:00

Florian Muijres PhD thesis entitles "Feathers by day, Membranes by night - Aerodynamic performance in bird and bat flight" has been published. The thesis contains seven different studies about aerodynamic performance in bats and birds. Two papers describe a high lift mechanism - Leading Edge Vortex - used by bats and pied flycatchers when flying slowly. This vortex enhances lift by 40% or more in these vertebrates, and before Florians work it was thought to be a typical insect mechanism. In other papers time-resolved PIV is used to work out aerodynamic efficiency of bats and birds, and to evaluate an adaptation of the classic actuator concept of flapping flight. Florian is to be congratulated to marvelous thesis, which is not only interesting on the inside but also beautiful on the outside. The public defense will take place on 28 April at 10:00 am, in the Blue Lecture Hall, Ecology Building, Lund. As faculty opponent we are very glad to welcome Professor Tom Daniel, University of Washington, Seattle.

What do birds have in common with dinosaurs?

2011-04-04T22:42:00.000+02:00

What does a tiny little bird have in common with a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex? How can birds fly?
This, and more, is what Susanne Åkesson, coordinator of CAnMove, tells us about in the episode "Reptiles and Birds" in the Swedish TV-program "Tax & Tass", broadcasted by UR. If you want to watch the program right away you can click HERE (valid until October 3, 2011). You can also watch it on SVT 2, April 7 at 14.55 or SVT B, April 9 at 14.15.

Travels in time and space in microalgae

2011-04-01T13:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday CAnMove member Karin Rengefors was invited to speak at a SACT (Scientific Activities group) seminar. She was first introduced by the next speaker, Lars Hederstedt and then it was time for us to hear all about the tiny phytoplankton/microalgae and their fascinating life.

The background to her research are the well-known algal blooms that occur in both lakes and at sea every year. The different types of microalgae vary in both color, size and shape. Microalgae are not one genetic lineage but are composed of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic lineages, which also explains their diversity.

Phytoplankton have a planktonic phase where they live in the water and a benthic phase where they form cysts and live on the sea bottom, waiting for the right time to become a plankton again and reproduce.

Polarella glacialis (Dinophyceae) photographed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). (a) planktonic cell, (b) benthic resting cyst

During their planktonic phase they migrate actively in time (seasonal and diel migration) to avoid unfavorable environmental conditions, competition with other microalgae, predators and to reproduce. During their benthic phase they perform passive migration in space with the help of flowing water, wind, birds and insects.

You can learn more about Karins research here

Interested in insects, ecology and evolution?

2011-03-24T10:42:00.001+01:00

On May the 14th, an international symposium titled: “For love of insects: Odours, diversity, and ecology” is held on Öland. Free of charge. One of the speakers is Henrik Smith, who will talk about “Pollinators and the landscape ecology of agri-environment schemes”, check out the rest of the programme!

Seminar about the Wind tunnel

2011-03-18T15:10:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, principal investigator Anders Hedenström gave a brief talk about the wind tunnel. Afterwards we all had the opportunity to go and see the tunnel “in action”. It was SACT (Scientific Activities group) that had arranged this talk and Anders told us all about how the wind tunnel is built and what can be done with it. The wind tunnel is huge and covers two floors. To get rid of the turbulence created by the big fan that makes the air flow through the tunnel, the tunnel is built to bend the air and make it smooth. When the air reaches the test section (where the animals fly and are studied) it has almost a laminar flow. The wind tunnel can also be tilted thus making it possible to also study gliding and climbing flight. Read more about the wind tunnel here.

Anders Hedenström

When we came to the wind tunnel, the master student Gide Koekkoek showed us the new invention, a robotic bat wing. This makes it easier to study air flow etc compared to using real bats that not always is so cooperative. If you want to know more about bat flight and different studies done in the wind tunnel, don´t miss the dissertation of PhD student Florian Muijres on the 28th of April. It takes place in the Blue Hall, the Ecology building.


Anders and Gide in the test section

We were many that wanted to see the wind tunnel

The robotic bat wing in action

Migratory butterflies arrive as quickly as birds

2011-03-09T13:31:00.001+01:00

Millions of moths and small birds migrate each year, thousands of kilometers between their summer and wintering areas. Now new research shows that these completely different animal groups have surprisingly similar migration speed. The butterflies take greater risks than the birds and uses tailwind to a greater extent (which is risky but profitable) while the birds rely more on self-powered flight and therefore do not always receive as much help from the wind. The researchers show that moths and birds have developed quite different behaviors for solving the same problem. The article is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, entitled "Convergent Patterns of Long-Distance Nocturnal Migration in Noctuid Mother and Passerine Birds" by Thomas Alerstam, Jason W. Chapman, Johan Bäckman, Alan D. Smith, Håkan Karlsson, Cecilia Nelson, Don R. Reynolds, Raymond HG Klaassen, and Jane K. Hill.

Shine a little light – nano-populism!

2011-03-07T15:02:00.005+01:00

Through a more than an hour long telephone interview from New York, the nano-zooplankton project within CanMove has been put in the spotlight of the popular science journal OnEarth Magazine. Check out the link: http://www.onearth.org/article/shine-a-little-light if you want a popular (populistic?) presentation of the massive migratory patterns of small crustacean animals in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Or read journalist Alan Burdick's blogpost on the same topic: http://www.aburdick.com/silvarerum/2011/03/04/chasing-daphnia-the-smallest-story-on-earth/

//Lars-Anders Hansson

Animal Flight Research Highlighted in Research Council Annual Report

2011-03-04T10:54:00.003+01:00

VR regards the Animal flight lab as "basic research of the highest quality", in their latest annual report. Read more on the flight lab blo g!

The fascinating migration of sharp-tailed sandpipers

2011-03-04T10:50:00.006+01:00

One of CAnMoves principal investigators, Åke Lindström, has recently (together with six other scientists) published an interesting article in the international journal “The Condor”. In the article they discuss the fact that juvenile sharp-tailed sandpipers choose a large detour during their migration. They fly from northeastern Siberia to Australia via Alaska! This is probably due to the large delta areas in western Alaska where the sharp-tailed sandpipers can eat a lot to become really fat and well prepared for the long journey to their nonbreeding area in Australia. You can read more about their fascinating migratory route here.

Formation of a new CAnMove action group: "Phenomics and visualization"

2011-02-17T14:22:00.000+01:00

Most of us who are directly and indirectly involved in CAnMove were probably attracted to ecology and evolutionary biology because we were interested in organisms. Remember what organisms are? It is those big fluffy things, surrounding the genome called "birds", "mammals", "insects" and "fish" which you can see out in nature.

With the development of (admittedly powerful) new molecular tools, such as "Next-generation sequencing" and various genomic techniques, it seems, however, that biology and ecology have becoming increasingly reductionist disciplines. The appreciation for organisms and phenotypics traits have vaned, and partly been lost on the way. This is unfortunate, since next-generation sequencing has many pitfalls and problems. These techniques will certainly not solve all the remaining questions in ecology and evolutionary biology, in spite of frequent claims that it will.

As a matter of fact, ten years after the full sequence of the human genome was presented, there has been many disappointments,, and in spite of thousands of molecular markers developed for interesting human and highly heritable traits (e. g. height, diabetes etc.), only a tiny fraction of the heritable variation has been "picked up" and been detected by these thousands of molecular markers. This is called "The missing heritability problem" and refers to the fact that molecular and genomic techniques have been disappointly inefficient in explaining the abundant genetic variation in phenotypic traits, for both humans and other animals.

These disappointments from human genome research have certainly many practical consequences, as we are still very far from what was promised a decade ago that we would be able to have "personalized medicine" and individual treatments based on knowledge of individuals genotypes. Today, it is still much more efficient to predict an individuals probability of carrying certain genetic factors for a disease by asking them to fill out a questionary about their relative's disease history, than sequencing their genome!

This will also have some implications for studies of animal migration, including the search for so-called magic "migration genes". Even if such genes exist and even if we would be able to locate their genomic positions, the molecular markers that we will find will (at best) only explain a few percent of the phenotypic variation in migratory behaviour, except in unusual systems and circumstances. There is no reason that the search for such genes for interesting phenotypic traits in other animals will be different from the overall conclusion from studies of the human genome: most phenotypic adaptations are due to many genes of small effect size, and large-effect genes are the exceptions, rather than the rule. Quantitative genetics has, against what many predicted a decade ago, survived well and triumphed, as it is still the most efficient and cost-effective way of quantifying genetic variation in natural populations.

However, to move ecology and evolutionary biology forwards, we need also new and more efficeint ways of measuring and quantifying the phenotypes of organisms, whether those phenotypes are behavioural, morphological or physiological. This is the new and emerging field of phenomics as outlined by evolutionary geneticist David Houle in a couple of important articles (here and here) that will soon replace the more old-fashioned field of genomics. Well, perhaps phenomics will not replace genomics, but it will certainly complement its more reductionist enterprise. Ultimately, we want to understand phenotypes and how they evolve, and it is clear that genomics will not deliver as much as it was promised a decade ago. Phenomics aims to fill the missing knowledge gap here.

Phenomics is a collective name for the development of high-throughput phenotypic scoring and measurement techniques that can be used to rapidly quantify phenotypes, including 3D-laser scanning, data loggers to record behaviour and physiology, and various photographic and photometric techniques, e. g. thermal image cameras, of individuals under field conditions. These and other techniques will revolutionize our field in the future, in the same way like population genetics has been radically transformed by the vast information from genomics. The development of phenomics as a research field will require collaborations between ecologists, evolutionary biologists, physicists, engineers, computer scientists and programmers, like all other highly integrative research fields.

It is there clearly time that both CAnMove and Lund need to early get involved in the emerging field of phenomics, so that we do not get caught in yesterday's hat of genomics and are left behind the rapidly moving research front. For this reason, we have decided to form a new Action Group within CAnMove entitled "Phenomics and data visualization". Those of you who are interested in participating in this could contact me (erik.svensson@zooekol.lu.se) or CAnMove coordinator (susanne.akesson@zooekol.lu.se). The core of this group, apart from me and Susanne, will also be Anders Hedenström, but others who might want to join in should contact us with their idéas and suggestions.

CAnMove announces two new Stipends!

2011-02-11T10:50:00.004+01:00

The titles of the two vacant Stipends are:

“Community metagenomics of Antarctic Protists – the importance of history versus environment”

and

“Immunological and physiological adaptations to migration: comparing migrating – sedentary populations and species”

The announcements are found at: http://www.naturvetenskap.lu.se/o.o.i.s/26278

Apply before 7th of March!

How did the Vikings navigate under cloudy skies?

2011-02-03T11:50:00.004+01:00

In a recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, CAnMove coordinator in collaboration with a team lead by an optical physicist Dr Gabor Horváth at Eötvös University in Budapest report on recent findings on how Viking navigators possibly could have used so-called sunstones to determine the position of the sun under foggy and cloudy conditions. The team for part of their work measured the skylight polarization under different optical conditions during an expedition (Beringia 2005) to the North Pole in 2005 organized by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat. Based on these and additional measurements and psychophysical laboratory experiments we suggest that the optical physical conditions required for sun navigation by using sunstones are met under cloudy and foggy conditions, such that the pattern of skylight polarization are transmitted through the clouds and correspond to the pattern seen under clear sky conditions. Overall there is a reduction in degree of polarization of the incoming light under cloudy and foggy skies, but the pattern of skylight polarization is very similar to what is seen in a clear sky. It has been suggested that Vikings have used Icelandic spar (calcite) or possibly crystals of tourmaline, which are birefringent crystals (linearly polarizing crystals), to determine the Sun’s position when it could not be seen in the sky. It is a theory which has been discussed for a long time, however, still such sunstones have not been found in association with Shipwrecks from the Viking ages. Now we show that the optical prerequisites for sunstone navigation are met.

A more popular account of the recent findings is presented at e.g.
Nature News.

In the issue of Phil Trans also other work are presented from CAnMove scientist Rachel Muheim on polarization navigation in birds and by Marie Dacke and Eric Warrent in the Vision group at the Department of Biology at Lund University on the use of polarized light day and night-active insects.

Susanne

Identifying the migratory gene – new CanMove constellation

2010-12-22T16:15:00.000+01:00

During the Häckeberga CanMove meeting in October, Staffan, Helena, Karin and Lasse started to discuss the possibility to use Daphnia pulex as an additional organism in CanMove´s search for “the migratory gene”. This organism is easily cultivated, produces a lot of cloned kids and, which is important, its genome is known. Later, when inspired by Steve Repperts talk on the Monarch butterflies during Miriam´s symposium on “Genetics of migration”, we decided to make this new initiative take real action. Our first steps have been to grow the organism and make some background search for information. So, in order to inform you all about this initiative, we hereby enclose a Christmas card from the lab. where the creatures are now reproducing and wishing us all a Merry Christmas and a Fruitful New year!

New paper on swift aerodynamics

2010-12-09T10:29:00.001+01:00

A new paper based on wind tunnel research is just out. This time it is flapping flight of the swift Apus apus, which is investigated by means of high-speed Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The paper reveals many new details about the aerodynamics of this highly aerial bird. The main author is Per Henningsson, now a postdoc in the Oxford Animal Flight Group where he works on insect flight. Per did this work on swift flight together with Florian Muijres and Anders Hedenström as part of his PhD thesis that was entirely devoted to flight in the swift. Read about our favorite bird here.

CAnMove Symposium: "Genetics of Migration"

2010-12-07T20:25:00.000+01:00

I believe that recent advances in the field of genomics will soon make it possible to evolve the research field of migration from phenotypic to molecular approaches to fully understand the genetic architecture of migratory traits. We thus considered this as an ideal point in time to provide a forum for researchers to exchange ideas and opinions on current research within the field of migratory genetics, and identify directions for future developments, and yesterday hosted the CAnMove Symposium on the "Genetics of Migration" in Lund.

We were indeed honoured by the number of participants, and excited to literally welcome participants from all over the world - thanks to you all having made this long trip to participate. It was great having had so many enthusiastic scientists - all working on one or the other aspect of the genetics of migration - here.

The backbone of the meeting was formed by six talks, presenting state-of-the-art research focussing on different aspects, covering a diverse range of taxa, and introducing methodological approaches that have recently emerged.

Steven Reppert from the University of Massachusetts shared insight into genomic, genetic and epigenetic approaches to monarch butterfly migration his lively lab is currently working on. Michael Banks from Oregon State University told us how genomics could help to elucidate spatiotemporal aspects of pacific salmon migration.

Within the field of migration, research on migratory birds has probably the longest tradition, and the talks of Martin Schaefer from Freiburg University and Staffan Bensch from Lund University focussed on microevolutionary processes and patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation along migratory divides in two migratory songbird species. Migratory divides as well as hybrid zones are great natural laboratories to study evolutionary processes and speciation, and the talks given by Anna Qvarnström and Jochen Wolf, both from Uppsala University, focussed on what we can learn from a Flycatcher hybrid zone, and how a genomic approach help us to incipient speciation in Carrion and Hooded crows.

Besides excellent talks, the highly interactive meeting included lively poster session and general discussions, sharing information and experience on the changes due to revolutionary technological achievements in this field. We closed the symposium with a plenary discussion evaluating methodological approaches to be focused upon, and critically assess possibilities and pitfalls thereof. The discussion also highlighted both importance and challenge of most accurately defining and controlling the target phenotype in focus, as well as including environmental variables in experimental design and analyses.

Discussion and plans for future projects, ideas for further development and collaboration continued over dinner – and will most certainly continue long thereafter.

On dispersal, gene flow, population divergence and learning in insects

2010-11-22T21:12:00.000+01:00

One consequence of animal movement and dispersal is gene flow between populations. Gene flow is generally thought to limit local adaptation and population divergence, since local selection is opposed by the homogeneising effects of gene flow. In spite of this, we often find that populations differ in morphological, physiological and behavioural traits, and one way why such population divergence can be achieved is through adaptive phenotypic plasticity. In terms of behavioural traits, it is increasingly being recognized that learning can be important, particularly when it comes to population divergence of mate preferences.

We have studied the effects of learning on the development of female mate preferences in a charismatic insect species: the banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens). Males of different species in these calopotergid damselflies are well-known for their enigmatic melanized wing patches, which serve multiple ecological functions, including mate recognition and species recognition for females.

Recently, we have showed that female mate preferences are not entirely genetic, but are partly learned, and develops in females as a result of physical pre-mating interactions and/or during mating with males. The result of this learning is that populations that are even close to each other and hence experience a lot of gene flow in between them, can diverge substantially in mate preferences, due to such learning. It is interesting that even these small insects have such advanced cognitive ability so that they can actually learn whom to mate with, and who is the wrong mate! Our paper has recently been published in the journal Evolution, where we also contributed with the cover photo of a male banded demoiselle aggressively defending his valuable territory (a water lilly). Our article was also covered by the popular science site and media outlet Science Daily.

Below is the link to the article and the abstract:

A ROLE FOR LEARNING IN POPULATION DIVERGENCE OF MATE PREFERENCES

Erik I. Svensson, Fabrice Eroukhmanoff, Kristina Karlsson, Anna Runemark & Anders Brodin

Article first published online: 13 JUL 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01085.x

Learning and other forms of phenotypic plasticity have been suggested to enhance population divergence. Mate preferences can develop by learning, and species recognition might not be entirely genetic. We present data on female mate preferences of the banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) that suggest a role for learning in population divergence and species recognition. Populations of this species are either allopatric or sympatric with a phenotypically similar congener (C. virgo). These two species differ mainly in the amount of wing melanization in males, and wing patches thus mediate sexual isolation. In sympatry, sexually experienced females discriminate against large melanin wing patches in heterospecific males. In contrast, in allopatric populations within the same geographic region, females show positive (“open-ended”) preferences for such large wing patches. Virgin C. splendens females do not discriminate against heterospecific males. Moreover, physical exposure experiments of such virgin females to con- or hetero-specific males significantly influences their subsequent mate preferences. Species recognition is thus not entirely genetic and it is partly influenced by interactions with mates. Learning causes pronounced population divergence in mate preferences between these weakly genetically differentiated populations, and results in a highly divergent pattern of species recognition at a small geographic scale.

Tracking small things with smaller things

2010-11-15T08:59:00.000+01:00

A major problem when studying behavior and migration of small organisms is that many questions, easily addressed for larger animals such as birds or fish, cannot be asked when it comes to animals of millimeter size, since tracking devices are too heavy to allow for the organism to act naturally. Recent advances in nanotechnology have, however, made it possible to individually track small animals. In a paper recently published in PloS One (Lard et al. 2010 PLoS ONE 5(10): e13516. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013516) we report on a novel approach to track movements and migratory behavior of millimeter sized aquatic animals, using nanometer sized fluorescent probes (quantum dots). Compared to previously used methods to label small animals, the nano-labeling method presented here offers considerable improvements. The method, developed in close cooperation between biologists, chemists and physicists, offers new opportunities to routinely study zooplankton responses to e.g. light, food and predation, i.e. opening up for advancements within research areas such as diel vertical/horizontal migration, partial migration and other differences in intra- and interspecific movements and migration. So, although our results are preliminary and the method still rough, CanMove is advancing the knowledge and opportunities also with respect to small organisms!

//Lars-Anders Hansson

CAnMove seminar on how ecological barriers are shaping migratory strategies of raptors

2010-11-04T13:21:00.000+01:00

At this week´s CAnMove seminar, Ugo Mellone was giving a talk about “Ecological barriers shaping the migratory strategies of raptors”. Ugo Mellone is currently doing his PhD at the University of Alacante in Spain but will stay in Sweden until January, working with Thomas Alerstam and Raymond Klaassen.

Two examples of the influence of ecological barriers on migratory strategies have been shown: the Eleonora’s falcon breeds in Mediterranean islands and reach the wintering grounds, located in Madagascar, in a 9’000 km journey. These birds migrate also during night, especially when crossing the Sahara desert, in order to overcome this ecological barrier as soon as possible. Besides this, Eleonora’s falcons are able to cross large water bodies like the Indian Ocean, flying non-stop also for 1’500 km and changing route accordng to weather conditions. Conversely, the Short-toed eagle is a broadwing raptor less adapted to flapping flight and therefore unable to cross large stretches of sea. The migratory strategies of the populations breeding in peninsular Italy are deeply influenced by the geography of the Mediterranean basin.

You can follow the journey of two eagles tagged with satellite transmitter from this website, where the maps are constantly updated.

Some papers concerning these researches can be downloaded from this website.

//Ugo

Migration as an anti-predator strategy in fish

2010-11-03T16:46:00.000+01:00

Common bream (Abramis brama)

Animal migration can take many different forms in nature. Partial migration, where not all of the animals in a population migrate, is extremely widespread and occurs in many species of birds, mammals and fish. Yet despite its prevalence in nature, what drives differences in migratory behaviour between individuals is a mystery that continues to puzzle biologists. Why do some individuals stay and others go?

A collaborative team of researchers from the Danish Technical University and CAnMove at Lund University, led by Dr. Christian Skov, recently investigated this question in a species of partially migratory freshwater fish, the common bream (reported in Proc. R. Soc. B.). Common bream stay in lake habitats over the summer and part of the population migration into streams over the winter. In the lakes during the summer the risk of predation is high, but the rewards are also high (high food availablity). During the winter predation risk decreases as predators become less active and eat less, but food availability also decreases, reducing the benefit of staying in the lake. If the risk/reward ratio for residency in the lake differs over the winter between individuals (when the rewards for staying are relatively low), this may lead to partial migration. One way in which individuals differ that would affect this risk/reward ratio is in their vulnerability to predation. Hence, all else being equal, one would predict that fish that are more susceptible to predators would be more likely to migrate, and that differences in vulnerability between individuals might explain why some migrate and some stay resident.

To test this prediction Christian Skov and his team were able to assign >450 individual bream from 2 lakes in Denmark with a 'predation vulnerability' score, which they calculated by sampling large numbers of piscivorous predators (pike) from each lake. The vulnerability score was calculated by estimating what proportion of predatory pike in a lake could eat each specific bream (as pike are gape limited predators). The bream were individually tagged and released and their migratory behaviour monitored over the winter. As predicted, fish with a high vulnerability score showed a much stronger propensity to migrate, migrated earlier and stayed for longer in the streams. This research is important as it suggests a powerful role for predation in shaping patterns of migration.

So it seems for bream the question of 'should I stay or should I go?' depends upon an individual's vulnerability to predation. For smaller, more vulnerable fish, if they go there will be trouble (after all migration is a costly and risky business), but if they stay there may be double...

//Ben

Read the full article here: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/10/26/rspb.2010.2035.full

Here is the full reference:

Skov C, Baktoft H, Brodersen J, Bronmark C, Chapman BB, Hanson L-A, Nilsson PA. 2010. Sizing up your enemy: Individual predation vulnerability predicts migratory probability. Proc. R. Soc. B. (in press)

Thanks to Henrik Baktoft for the bream photograph.

Bird populations are doing gradually better the further away they are from the hottest part of their distribution range, or...

2010-11-01T13:01:00.000+01:00

... Success in the north, trouble in the south

Climate change is affecting our fauna in various ways, by influencing distribution range, population size, and migration and breeding phenology. For example, recent studies have shown that European bird species living in a colder climate (that is, generally more northern bird species), are doing relatively poorly compared to species used to a warmer climate (more southern species).

As far as distribution goes, shifts at the poleward limit of the distributional range, or at the upper edge of the altitudinal range, have been documented for many taxa. But beyond changes at range limits, more subtle changes within the ranges of species are also likely, and might have important ecological and evolutionary consequences.

In a French–Dutch–Swedish joint effort we studied how the different populations of 62 common European bird species have developed over 20 years (1989–2008), as recorded in national bird monitoring schemes. France and Sweden were each divided into three equally sized latitudinal belts, and the Netherlands was considered a belt of its own. The following independent factors were used when trying to explain recent population size changes within these latitudinal belts: the thermal distance (in °C) to the thermal maximum of their European distribution (how far the birds are from the warmest part of their range), habitat preference, habitat specialization, body mass, latitude and migration distance.

For the 62 species considered, we found a gradual and linear significant increase in long-term population growth rate along the thermal range, when moving towards a species coolest range limit. Accordingly, the bird populations were doing better and better the further away they were from their thermal maximum (put in another way, the closer they were to the coolest part of their range). This effect was detected beyond other effects expected to affect population growth rates, such as the decline of farmland birds and habitat specialists.

We failed to highlight that long-distance migrants were more prone to decline, as has been shown in several other studies, probably because the studied set of species was restricted, excluding some Afro-Palaearctic migrants that do not occur in all the three studied countries. Also, recent declines in long-distance migrants are most severe in seasonal habitats in Western Europe, whereas we studied a broader array of habitats and countries.

Thus, beyond previously known effects on population dynamics near range limits, we revealed that population dynamics were not randomly distributed within species range, suggesting that European breeding birds are influenced by climate warming, and are experiencing demographic disequilibrium, along their whole thermal range.

Jiguet, F., Devictor, V., Ottvall, R., van Turnhout, C., van der Jeugt, H. & Lindström, Å. 2010. Bird population trends are linearly affected by climate change along species thermal ranges. – Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 277: 3601–3608. Read the full article HERE.

// Åke Lindström

Remembering the summer: field work with damselflies in Skåne

2010-10-19T19:58:00.000+02:00

Winter is approaching fast, and what could be better then than to try to remember the past beatiful summer for as long as possible?Varm summers means field work with insects, at least for some of us. This was also the case for myself, CAnMove postdoc Sophia Engel and a number of other students and postdocs working with field studies of calopterygid damselflies. Here is a nice movie about CAnMove-related field work from Lund University's Youtube-channel. This movie contains an interview with Sophia and myself, where we explain what kind of experiments we did, and why. Unfortunately, this movie is in Swedish, not English, but at least you can enjoy the pictures!

Basically, we have quantified flight speeds of individually marked damselflies of two species (Calopteryx virgo and C. splendens), and we relate this performance-trait to wing morphology (shape), longevity in the field and mating success (sexual selection). A key player in this system is an enigmatic avian predator which kills these insects: The white wagtail (Motacilla alba), which also appears in the movie. The ornithologists among you readers will hopefully also realise how fascinating this insect system actually is, since it obviously also involves a bird! A key goal of ours is to link morphology to performance and fitness, and combine flight speed estimates with data on morphology and fitness. Such studies are rarely possible to perform, particularly not in natural populations of insects, so we are quite excited about the results that will hopefully come out from this work.

If the movie above does not work, you could follow this link instead. Enjoy! And go back and watch this movie whenever you miss the summer...

CAnMove research discussion on residency, partial migration and nanobiology

2010-09-28T18:19:00.001+02:00

Today the first group of enthusiastic and brave CAnMovians started the series of brainstorm events to discuss development of research areas within CAnMove for the coming years. The task was to highlight the most interesting questions and needs to fulfill the identified research goals. The first event covered an at first glance odd combination of research areas which included residency, partial migration and nanobiology. Lars-Anders Hansson chaired the discussions which turned out to be very creative and the group formulated a suggested plan including infrastructure investments, new collaborations and manuscript ideas.
The next event is Orientation & Navigation, Migration Patterns (chair: Susanne Åkesson) - 30/9 at 13:30 - 15:30h in Communis.
All CAnMovians are Very Welcome to take part in the brainstorming events and to be involved in formulating the new directions of CAnMove research!
/Susanne

Notes from the Field: Second Contact

2010-09-27T10:27:00.000+02:00

By Keith Larson

On 18 May we departed from Lund University, southern Sweden, the destination, 61˚ north latitude along the Baltic coast of Sweden. Our goal was to trap willow warblers along several transects traversing a secondary contact zone for two subspecies spanning the center of the country from east to west. On this trip we would drive over 5000 km from the Baltic Sea in the east to the mountains on the border of Norway to the west and back trapping almost 400 birds at 30 sites in seven weeks!

The first transect was along the Baltic coast from Söderhamn to Umeå with trapping occurring at sites previously sampled between 1996 and 2004. From the first day we set our nets we noticed that our target species, despite being the most abundant species in Scandinavia, was less abundant than during our previous two trapping seasons. This year to reach our site sample size we had to work many more hours and trapped over larger areas. It had been a long cold winter and signs of summer were a long way off!

Most days started before sunrise with breakfast, packing the car, and driving forest roads all day long, sometimes until after sunset. Along the roads we were searching for patches of birch, the preferred habitat for willow warblers. Armed with an mp3 player and speaker we intruded into the territory of each male willow warbler we could locate. The song blasting from the speaker typically elicited an aggressive response from the owner. With good luck and a properly placed net the result was a bird in the net.

The first willow warbler in the net was a great moment each day. We collected biometrics, a little blood for genetic analysis, and a couple of feathers for stable isotope analysis. The bird was released with a ring and maybe now marked will be recaptured during migration somewhere between Sweden and Africa!

The habitats varied tremendously from site to site. The perfect patch is a dense stand of birch with low branches or an understory that will attract singing males from the canopy. We have learned that there is a distinctive phenology in behavior and differences in individual responses to intruders within territories that dictates how to use the playback system. Some birds only give you one chance to catch them. If they bounce out of the net or fly low and you have the net set the wrong way you might never catch them.

The second transect crossed from the Baltic coast to the mountains of Lappland. As we progressed to the northwest, the stands of birch increased in density as did the number of willow warblers. Here we were fortunate to capture two willow warblers ringed elsewhere, the first on migration in Sweden during the previous fall and the second in Poland. By the time we had reached the end of the transect on the border of Norway near Hemavan it was early June. The long winter still had its grip on the land as the lakes where still frozen, the birch just beginning to bud, and an occasional snow shower to remind us of its presence.

The third transect followed the Inlandsvägen or inland highway from Storumån (famous for its skiers, arm wrestlers, and the Wildman) to Mora (home of the famous Vasaloppet ski competition). Here we trapped often in vast areas of managed forest that required lots of patience and persistence to trap our sample size each day. As winter finally turned to spring the onslaught of mosquitoes arrived! Fortunately we had head nets and jungle juice to make our work tolerable; drive, find patch of birch, listen for willow warbler, use playback and mist-net to catch willow warbler, collect measurements and tissues, release bird, and repeat – 15 times each day!

The final transect was from Idre north to Lake Anjan through the fjäll or mountains along the border of Norway. Here we traversed the contact zone from south to north. The scenery was fantastic and with vast regions of birch forest the trapping improved each day as we moved north out of the managed forests. Despite the large amounts of high quality habitat, we still had the impression that the density of birds was much lower than the previous two years. As we trapped our last birds of the season near Vålådalen, we wondered how such a different year might affect the structure of the contact zone.

Willow warbler field crew: Max Lundberg, John Boss, Miriam Liedvogel, Sieglinde Kundisch, and Keith Larson

CAnMove symposium – Genetics of Migration, 6 Dec 2010

2010-09-20T08:22:00.000+02:00

Our knowledge about the genetic basis of migration or migratory traits (i.e. directional information in birds with a migratory divide like willow warblers or blackcaps) today is mainly based on crossbreeding and displacement experiments. But what is the number and identity of genes involved in controlling differences in migratory strategies? And what are the magnitudes of their effects?

The aim of the symposium Genetics of Migration is to discuss the state of the art and identify future directions and methodological approaches, as well as providing an opportunity to interact with scope for future collaborations between different institutions.

The symposium will be held in the Ecology Building on 6th December 2010 and we very much welcome all people fascinated in the field of migratory genetics and all CAnMove members to participate. The programme will be centred on a backbone of six talks by key figures in the field presenting case studies across a variety of taxa. The preliminary programme can be found here. We will close the symposium with a plenary discussion to synthesise future directions, methodological approaches, and assess possibilities and pitfalls thereof.

We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to present and discuss their work with a poster presentation - there will be ample opportunity for interaction and general discussion with all participants.

Registration: Attendance of the symposium is free, if you want to attend, please register here. The deadline for applications is October 22nd.

Further information can be found on the CAnMove page "Conference and meetings", this page will be regularly updated.

We are looking forward to seeing you all at the symposium, welcome!

Miriam, Susanne and Staffan

CAnMove symposium: 'The Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration'

2010-09-13T14:33:00.000+02:00

Symposium participants receive some juggling therapy at the symposium barbecue (photo: Arne Andersson)

Last week we held a CAnMove symposium in 'The Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration' at Lund University. We had 19 international speakers, including 4 CAnMovians, who presented theoretical and empirical research into partial migration in a diverse range of taxa, including neotropical birds, salmonid fish and ungulates. Partial migration, where just a fraction of a population migrates, is thought to be extremely widespread in nature. As technology advances and our knowledge of animal movement patterns increases, the prevalence of partial migration amongst migratory species becomes even more striking. Some of the highlights of the meeting included Mark Hebblewhite's (University of Montana) plenary talk about partial migration in ungulates. His group has shown that human activities have altered the cost/benefit balance of the resident strategy by reducing predation risk from wolves in areas with human settlements. We also had some illuminating theory talks by Per Lundberg and Anders Hedenstrom (Lund University), Allison Shaw (Princeton University), and our second plenary speaker, Hanna Kokko (Australian National University). Hanna gave an excellent introduction to the theory of partial migration, and showed that behaviour that is optimal for the individual is not always optimal when scaled to a population level.

Other highlights included Christian Skov (Danish Technical University), whose work highlights the importance of predation as a factor influencing conditional migratory behaviour in multiple populations of freshwater fish, bream. Courtney Conway (University of Arizona) also took a cross-population approach to test hypotheses of partial migration in burrowing owls in North America, and Alice Boyle (University of Western Ontario) presented a fascinating series of research projects which investigated the 'limited foraging opportunity' hypothesis both a a species- and community-level in neotropical birds.

All in all it was an informative and fun symposium, with a diversity of research questions in the area of partial migration, including the role of culture and learning, animal personality, and parent-offspring conflict in partial migration, which really highlights the breadth of activity in this resurgent field. We ended with discussions and a CAnMove barbecue. Many of the participants took advantage of juggling therapy from Marcus Ljungqvist to wind down from the symposium. Was he successful at teaching juggling to scientists? Well, at least partially ...

We will now begin work on a thematic edition of Oikos on the 'Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration' which will include some of the exciting research we heard about at the symposium. Watch this space for more details!

/Ben

RIN11 conference on navigation

2010-09-07T21:17:00.000+02:00

Dear CAnMovers!

Please, do not forget to sign up for the RIN11 conference!

The Royal Institute of Navigation will be holding the Seventh International Conference on how animals navigate (RIN11 Orientation & Navigation Birds, Humans & Other Animals) at Whiteknights Campus, Reading University, UK from midday Wednesday 6April until midday Saturday 9 April 2011.

Abstracts should be submitted to conference@rin.org.uk by 15 September 2010. Notification of provisional acceptance will be given by 30 October 2010.

For more information on conference, please, see news section on CAnMove home page.
/Susanne

News from bat research conference, Prague

2010-08-26T23:01:00.000+02:00

The 15^th International Bat Research Conference, held in Prague 23-27 August, is coming to an end. CAnMove has been represented by four persons, all of who have made presentations. The main activity was on Monday (23 August), when we participated in the flight symposium, organised by Anders Hedenström (CAnMove) and Sharon Swartz (Brown University). Highlights today have mainly been the “Movement” symposium with presentations about bat migration in North America and Europe using stable isotope analysis. Ron Larkin, USA, presented echoes from goal tracking radar studies that likely represent migrating bats, while others presentations were about the use of satellite telemetry and GPS loggers on tropical fruit bats. There have also been some talks about the emerging field of bat orientation. The conference has given lots of ideas and inspiration to develop the research on bat migration at Lund. The image shows the speakers at the bat flight symposium, during the post-symposium dinner at Café du Paris in Prague city.

Nya Post-doc möjligheter!

2010-07-02T12:03:00.000+02:00

Möjligheter att ansöka om post-doc stipendiat inom ramen för CAnMove
Post-doc programmet inom CAnMove har varit väldigt framgångsrikt och det finns nu ekonomiskt utrymme att utlysa ytterligare två (2) stipendier om vardera max 24 månader. Finansieringen kommer att följa den modell vi tidigare beslutat d.v.s. 18 månader bekostas från CAnMove och sedan finns möjlighet för den handledande PI´n att förlänga med ytterligare 6 månader (kostnad 21 200/månad). Om PI´n inte anser sig klara detta avbryts stipendiet efter 18 månader.
Om du är intresserad av att söka medel för en stipendiat kan du skicka in en kort ansökan (max 1 sida på engelska) som 1) Översiktligt beskriver det tänkta projektet; 2) visar att det tänkta projektet utgör en viktig del av CAnMove (är du osäker på vad som menas med detta så läs ursprungsansökan); 3) Om projektet handleds av flera PI´s inom CAnMove är detta en merit.
Skicka ansökan till koordinatorn (Susanne Åkesson, susanne.akesson@zooekol.lu.se) senast 15 September 2010. Utvärdering och rankning av ansökningarna kommer att göras av vår scientific advisory board (SAB). Beslut tas av Styrgruppen.

Styrgruppen CAnMove

Course on: Contemporary Evolution: Humans as Agents of Selection

2010-06-30T17:16:00.001+02:00

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Organisms that are harvested show some of the fastest trait changes observed in wild populations. Anthropogenic pollution has been also shown to increase the rate of evolutionary change in organisms in their natural environment. These rapid phenotypic shifts can have severe implications for management and conservation.

The theme of the course is human-induced evolution and will cover topics on contemporary evolution induced by exploitation, in novel environments, and caused by habitat modification and pollution. Contemporary evolution has been defined as evolutionary change observable over less than a few centuries. This course will include topics on evolutionary change in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Dates: 4-9 October 2010

Intended for: MSc, PhD students, researchers

Application deadline: 20 August 2010

For course information: http://www.bio.uib.no/evofish/pages/NMA2010/NMA2010.php

//A course that might be of interest to CAnMovers,
Susanne

New paper on wind tunnels

2010-05-28T23:23:00.001+02:00

CAnMove postdoc Dr. Sophia Engel and co-workers have published a new paper on the utility of wind tunnels in animal flight research. This paper reviews the ways in which wind tunnel studies can advance our understanding on animal flight, covering aerodynamics, energetics and physiology. One issue that is brought up is whether power-speed relationships are U-shaped, as prescribed by theory, or if they take on some other shape. The answer to this, and many other other, question can be read the paper at

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/icq063? ijkey=DrX0zbhijLWSnOX&keytype=ref

Lake quality affects waterfowl migratory routes: A joint CanMove project

2010-05-05T17:31:00.000+02:00

In a cooperative CanMove project we used long-term databases on fluctuations in regional bird abundances as well as on limnological monitoring to study interactions between migrating waterfowl and stop-over lake ecosystems quality. We show that despite the large amount of migratory waterfowl, our study site L. Krankesjön, was not negatively affected by the waterfowl which removed less than 3% of the macrophyte biomass per year. Moreover, we show that most waterfowl species occured in lower abundances during periods with low density of macrophytes, than when submersed macrophytes flourished and the water was clear. This pattern was not affected by regional fluctuations in abundances. Hence, our study suggest that some migratory waterfowl taxa select stop-over lakes based on stop-over habitat quality, suggesting that migratory routes are not fixed but instead adjusted over time. If you are interested in reading the whole paper go to: http://www.limnol.lu.se/limnologen/publikationer/834.pdf

Storms influence patterns of tropical bird migration

2010-04-30T09:50:00.000+02:00

Montane tropical forest in Costa Rica, with a White Ruffed Manakin (inset). Photograph courtesy of Alice Boyle

In an interesting paper published online recently in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Boyle et al 2010: see link below), Dr. Alice Boyle and co-workers present research into the effect of storms upon migration in tropical birds. Many animals, including birds, bats and insects, migrate up and down elevational gradients, from the lowlands to higher ground in mountainous regions of tropical forest. This is known as altitudinal migration, and the factors that drive animals to migrate in this fashion remain obscure. One idea, proposed forty years ago by Alexander Skutch, is that tropical storms could force tropical birds to migrate downhill. In this paper, Dr. Boyle and her co-workers test this idea, and also suggest a mechanism. They propose that one explanation for these patterns may be that storms reduce the time a bird can spend finding food at higher altitudes more than at lower altitudes, and that this reduction in foraging time may pose a very real risk of starvation.

Dr. Boyle tested these hypotheses with a species of partially migratory tropical bird, the White-ruffed manakin. White-ruffed manakins are small fruit-eating birds that breed in the wet, mountainous forests of Central America. After the breeding season some birds migrate downhill to lower altitudes whilst some remain at higher altitudes. Dr. Boyle found that capture rates at higher elevation decrease during storms and increase at lower altitudes, which suggests that storms do play a role in altitudinal migration in this species. Interestingly, at high altitudes before storms there is a bias towards males, and after storms a bias towards females, which may be linked to differences in body size between sexes (males are around 15% smaller). By collecting blood samples from birds and analyzing physiological measures of body condition, Dr. Boyle also found support for her ‘limited foraging opportunities’ hypothesis: rainfall was associated with plasma coricosterone levels, fat stores, plasma metabolites and haematocrit. These results suggest that weather-related risks for species requiring high food intakes can explain the altitudinal migrations of tropical animals. This is an important advance in our understanding of animal migration in the tropics, which may be important in conservation efforts. Furthermore, this work suggests that climate change may have significant impacts upon migratory birds in the tropics, as global warming is predicted to alter the severity and timing of rainfall events in tropical regions of the world.

/ Ben

Here is the link to the full paper:

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/07/rspb.2010.0344.full.pdf+html?sid=7712b775-f8c6-4133-8af4-8fbcec4d4f5f

New publication: Grand Challenges in Migration Biology

2010-04-22T16:59:00.000+02:00

Three members of CAnMove (Melissa Bowlin, Susanne Åkesson, and Anders Hedenström) are among the authors of a review recently published online by the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology. The paper, titled, ‘Grand Challenges in Migration Biology’, advocates the use of integrative research to address the big questions in the field of migration biology. It grew out of a symposium titled, ‘Integrative Migration Biology,’ organized by Melissa Bowlin, Isabelle-Anne Bisson, and Martin Wikelski at the annual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Seattle last January.

In the paper, Bowlin et al. argue that the best way to meet the ‘grand challenges’ of migration biology is to perform multidisciplinary research that includes multiple species and clades as well as the entire annual cycle of organisms. They also stress the importance of a strong theoretical foundation and the need to study migrants both in the laboratory and out in the field. The paper concludes by highlighting the data the authors believe will prove to be vital for conservation efforts.

‘Grand Challenges in Migration Biology’ can be found on the ‘advance access’ section of ICB’s website, here: http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/papbyrecent.dtl .

/Melissa

Photo: Arne Hegemann

PI Lectures on web

2010-04-15T21:46:00.000+02:00

During the popular science week given earlier this spring for gymnasium students at the Ecology Building CAnMove PI Åke Lindström lectured on “Dow Jones Index och svensk fågeltaxering” (Dow Jones index and the Swedish breeding bird censusing). PI Dennis Hasselquist also lectured on the theme “Harmoni och kaos I naturen – om lämmercykler och fågelinfluensa (Harmony and chaos in nature – about lemming cycles and bird influensa). Both lectures are very interesting and are available at:
http://www.ur.se/play/157503

Susanne

Daytime flight of emerging bats

2010-04-04T11:56:00.000+02:00

In temperate regions bats survive the winter either by hibernation (the typical bat strategy) or by migration south combined with hibernation in the wintering area. The fuel for hibernation (and migration) is fat, which is consumed at a slow rate throughout the winter. About now (March/April) is the time to wake up for hibernators, when they are running low on fat loads and they have to find food to survive. It is not uncommon to see bats flying around during daytime at the time of emergence from hibernacula. On good Friday (2^nd April) the Hedenström-Åkesson family had been bird watching around Voms ängar and Krankesjön, when they drove back a small bat flying back and forth along the road on the Revinge field was spotted at 14:20. They managed to get some photos, from which it is apparent we are dealing with a Pipistrellus species. The most common, and hence most likely, species in Sweden is P. pygmaeus (dvärgfladdermus), but P. pipistrellus (pipistrell) and P. nathusii (trollfladdermus) cannot easily be excluded on the basis of the photos. Why are bats emerging from hibernation sometimes flying in daylight? It could be that they are in such a desperate need for energy that they need to feed in daytime; perhaps diurnal insects are more abundant than nocturnal insects at this time of the year? It could also be that the circadian clock has drifted during the winter sleep, which makes them fly at the “wrong” time?

Special Issue on Magnetoreception (J Roy Soc Interface, April 6, 2010; 7)

2010-03-23T12:35:00.000+01:00

A special issue published within the Journal of the Royal Society Interface presents a themed collection of papers on the topic "Magnetoreception". The recent issue aims to give an overview of current research activities in the interdisciplinary field of magnetoreception across different taxa, combining ample sub-disciplines within biology, chemistry, physics and material sciences.

Browse the table of content here, an overview of the contributing articles is given by Michael Winklhofer, subject editor of this special issue, in his introductory article: Magnetoreception; doi: 10.1098/rsif.2010.0010.focus.

AFLP and stable isotopes reveal complex migration pattern in European red admirals

2010-03-22T23:29:00.000+01:00

In two recent papers a former PhD student at Lund University, now postdoc in Leiden, Oskar Brattström and co-authors have used stable isotopes and AFLP technique to study the structure of population composition and pattern of migration of European red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) across Europe.

Brattström, O., Åkesson, S. and Bensch, S. 2010. AFLP reveals cryptic population structure in migratory European red admirals Vanessa atalanta. Ecol. Entomol. 35: 48-52. // DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2311.2009.01163.x

AFLP profiles showed significant differences between almost all sampled locations, but there was no clear pattern of isolation-by-distance. We found two distinct genotype clusters present in different frequencies at all study sites. The frequencies of these genotypic clusters varied significantly between years within the same site. Remarkably few individuals were of mixed ancestry, indicating that some isolating mechanisms are present. Twenty-seven mtDNA haplotypes were identified but they showed no geographic structure, nor were they related to either of the two genotype clusters identified in the AFLP data. Our results suggest long, but more complex migration movements between years for this species. Most field observations of migrating red admirals suggest a regular north–south migration pattern in Europe. Our data indicate both long-distance migration and a more variable pattern in orientation, since the composition of the two genotypic clusters shows dramatic variation between sites and years in the northern part of the distribution range.

Brattström, O., Bensch, S., Wassenaar, L. I., Hobson, K. and Åkesson, S. 2010. Understanding the migration ecology of European red admirals Vanessa atalanta using stable hydrogen isotopes. Ecography // doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0587.2009.05748.x

We also show by using stable isotope that the variation in deuterium associated with a southwest-northeast gradient can be used to assign individual butterflies to general regions of origin. Tracking migratory movement of small animals with variable migration patterns is difficult with standard mark recapture methods or genetic analysis. We used stable hydrogen isotope (dD) measurements of wings from European red admirals Vanessa atalanta to study several aspects of this species’ migration. In the central part of southern Europe we found large differences in dD values between red admirals sampled in autumn and spring supporting the hypothesis that reproduction takes place in the Mediterranean region during winter. There was also an apparent influx to southern Europe in the spring of individuals with a more southerly origin, since many samples had higher dD values and similar to those expected from coastal areas of North Africa. We found a clear seasonal difference in the dD values of red admirals sampled in northern Europe. Spring migrants arriving in northern Europe generally had high dD values that indicated a southerly origin. In autumn, dD values suggested that red admirals were mostly from regions close to the sampling sites, but throughout the sampling period there were always individuals with dD values suggesting non-local origins. The migration pattern of this species is supposedly highly variable and plastic. dD differences between individuals in the western part of Europe were generally small making migratory patterns difficult to interpret. However, butterflies from western Europe were apparently isolated from those from north-eastern Europe, since dD values in the western region rarely corresponded to those of autumn migrants from the north-east. Use of dD data for inferring butterfly migration in Europe is complex, but our study showed that this technique can be used to help uncover previously unknown aspects of red admiral migration.

Birds, bats and insects

2010-03-22T22:16:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday the 23 March 2010, Christoffer Johansson will deliver his docent lecture in the red room (ground floor), Ecology Building, at 10:00. Don't miss this unique opportunity to get a young scientists view on his research field - animal locomotion. The title of the talk is "Birds, bats and butterflies - evolutionary solutions to flight". This should be as Christmas for all CAnMovians, as it cannot be better than this! Christoffer is based at the Theoretical Ecology section, Department of Biology, and is usually found in the wind tunnel lab where is tries various tricks to get animals to fly in front of high-tech cameras. He also spends time on developing matlab scripts to analyze kinematics and flow visualization data.

All are very welcome!

Summer Course Animal Movement Analysis - Amsterdam 5-9 July 2010

2010-03-15T11:12:00.000+01:00

Please, find the link below to a summer course organized at Amsterdam University, 5-9 July 2010 on Animal Movements Analysis.

If you would like to register for this course, or for more information, please send your contact information, current position and a very brief description of your current research to Judy Shamoun-Baranes shamoun@uva.nl.

For information:
http://sites.google.com/site/michaelukemp/wind-maps/SCGE-2010_animalmovement_final.pdf?attredirects=0

This course would be ideal for several of the CAnMove PhD students, and I strongly recommend you to check the program.

/Susanne

Winner of Prize for best article in Navigation News during 2009 on how animals navigate

2010-03-03T22:30:00.000+01:00

I am happy to forward a recent message from Pinky Grocott, Royal Insitute of Navigation to the CAnMove team.

Pinky wrote:
"The Editor RIN is pleased to announce that Dr Miriam Liedvogel of Lund University, Sweden, has won the prize for the best paper on animal navigation in Navigation News in 2009. Miriam’s paper ‘The Cryptochrome Controversy’, a subject which had generated a lot of heat among biologists over many months on the RIN e-mail animal-forum, explained the inherent issues in terms that would be understood by the many disciplines and by most of the practitioners within the RIN. Miriam will receive £250 cash, one year’s free membership of the RIN and a certificate of the award."

Congratulations Miriam! Very well done!

/Susanne