The identification of migration routes, wintering grounds and stopover sites are crucial issues for the understanding of the Palearctic-African bird migration system as well as for the development of relevant conservation strategies for trans-Saharan migrants. Using miniaturized light-level geolocators we report a comprehensive and detailed year round track of a granivorous trans-Saharan migran...

An understanding of the distribution and spatial structure of the natural vectors of zoonothic pathogens is of interest for effective disease control and prevention. Here, we investigate the range-wide population genetic structure of common pochard (Aythya ferina), a long-distance migratory duck and potential vector of highly pathogenic avian influenza. We collected several hundred samples from...

Studying the energetics of marine top predators such as seabirds is essential to understand processes underlying adult winter survival and its impact on population dynamics. Winter survival is believed to be the single most important life-history trait in long-lived species but its determinants are largely unknown. Seabirds are inaccessible during this season, so conventional metabolic studies ...

Scientists and birdwatchers alike have noted precipitous population declines in many species of migratory songbirds during the last thirty years. However, the transitory nature of migratory birds makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of these declines. Some postulate that habitat loss on the tropical wintering grounds is the cause, while others suggest that forest degradation on the te...

Quantifying the spatial genetic structure of highly vagile species of birds is important in predicting their degree of population demographic and genetic independence during changing environmental conditions, and in assessing their abundance and distribution. In the western Arctic, Lesser Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) provide an example useful for evaluating spatial population gen...

Juvenile survival and recruitment can be more sensitive to environmental, ecological and anthropogenic factors than adult survival, influencing population-level processes like recruitment and growth rate in long-lived, iteroparous species such as southern right whales. Conventionally, Southern right whales are individually identified using callosity patterns, which do not stabilise until 6-12 m...

Regular counts of wintering waterfowl have been undertaken as a part of the International Waterfowl Census (IWC) and the National Swedish Environmental Monitoring Program since 1964. After the first years, a network of annually surveyed sites was established for the calculation of annual indices. Country-wide surveys (also including aerial counts) were undertaken 1971–1974, 1987–1989, 1992–1993...

An enduring problem in avian ecology and conservation is linking breeding and wintering grounds of migratory species. As migratory species and populations vary in the degree to which individuals from distinct breeding locales mix on stop-over sites and wintering grounds, establishing migratory connectivity informs our understanding of population demography and species management. We present a n...

The production of young, mated honeybee queens (Apis mellifera) is essential to replace dead or start new colonies after wintering. Mass storage during winter and their use the following spring an interesting strategy that could help fulfill this need. In study, we investigated survival, fertility, fecundity stored massively in queenless from September April (eight months). were kept environmen...

BACKGROUND The ability to connect breeding, stopover and wintering locations of populations of migratory birds greatly enhances our understanding of the phenomenon of migration and improves our chances of effectively conserving these species. Among Palearctic-Afrotropical migratory species, aerial insectivores like the house martin (Delichon urbicum) are sensitive to factors influencing the ava...