Charles Anderson gives lecture about long-distance migration in dragonflies

For those of you who have not already seen this interesting video, take a look! It describes a new long-distance migratory system involving insects - dragonflies! The migration takes place annually, between the two monsoons, from India to Africa and is much more impressive in terms of distance than the more wellknown Monarch butterfly migration in North America. This shows that there is still many new basic things and surprises to discover in nature.

New CAnMove postdoc on insect flight: Welcome Sophia Engel!

Together with my co-PI Anders Hedenström, I am pleased to introduce our first CAnMove postdoc Sophia Engel. Sophia will join CAnMove soon on a project dealing with insect flight adaptations and evolutionary ecology, dealing with adaptations for dispersal and predator avoidance. This is an exciting project that will combine field and wind tunnel studies, using moths and calopterygid damselflies as model organisms. Both Anders and I are thus extremely happy to host Sophia as a shared postdoc. Below, I will let Sophia introduce herself in her own words:

"I am interested in the interaction of physiological capabilities, ecology, and evolution in shaping a species’ life-history. My previous research has been at the interface of ecology and physiology: For my doctoral work I focused on avian migration. I combined wind tunnel studies and detailed measurements of water- and energy budgets at various ambient conditions with modeling approaches, and showed that dehydration can be a limiting factor for flight duration under naturalistic ambient conditions for my model species, the Rose-coloured Starling. A more recent project is focused on understanding the effects of climate variability on primary productivity, arthropod consumer performance and ultimately the structure and function of the food web in the Chihuahuan Desert of central New Mexico. I am looking forward to combine these two lines of research, wind tunnel studies and insect ecology, in the project “insect flight and morphological trade-offs” at the CAnMove center in Lund!"

Painted lady migration

Dear All,
Perhaps some of you have noted that there has been intense migration north by Painted ladies (tistelfjäril) in Europe this year, and a high number of butterflies have been observed also in Sweden. You may see the observations reported to Artportalen. Please, find below a report (and photo) by Pål-Axel Olsson from his field observations at the east coast of Skåne (Österlen) where he has observed many painted ladies during the spring. Have anyone else made observations of painted ladies this spring? If so, please, make sure to report your observations to http://www.artportalen.se/.
/Susanne

Pål-Axels observations (in Swedish):
En stor mängd tistelfjärilar har sträckt in till Sverige under våren. Arten har varit talrik i Skåne sedan mitten av maj enligt Artportalen. Redan innan dess var den vanlig på många håll i mellersta Europa. Fjärilarna har troligen kläckts i Nordafrika och sedan sträckt norrut. I Sverige har de varit särskilt vanliga i Skåne, på Västkusten, Öland och i Sörmland.
I Skåne har jag sett tistelfjärilar på de flesta lokaler jag besökt på Österlen under våren. Jag har sett dem i Lyngsjö, Everöd, Brösarp, St Olof, Vitaby, Kivik, vid Klammersbäck, Kumlan och på Ravlunda skjutfält. I sandmarkerna har tistelfjärilarna ofta besökt gråfibbla.
Pål Axel Olsson, Ekologiska institutione