We wish you all a merry christmas!

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

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

 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

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!

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

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

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!

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

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"

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

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

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

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

Lund University at night. 

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

Susanne