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.