First geolocator tracks of Swedish red-necked phalaropes reveal the Scandinavia-Arabian Sea connection

We studied migration and wintering patterns of a wader with a pelagic lifestyle during the non-breeding period, the rednecked phalarope Phalaropus lobatus . Using light-level geolocation, we obtained three full annual tracks and one autumn migration track of male red-necked phalaropes caught during breeding in Scandinavia. Th ese tracks confi rmed expectations that individuals from the Scandinavian population winter in the Arabian Sea. Migration was accomplished in two to four migration leaps, staging for a few days in the Gulf of Finland (autumn) or the southern Baltic Sea (spring) and for up to a month in or near the Black and Caspian Sea (autumn and spring). In addition, travel speeds suggested that only the fl ights between the Baltic and Black/Caspian Sea are non-stop, and thus the birds seem to make additional short stops during the other flights. Stopover time in the Black/Caspian Sea is only 8 – 10 d in spring but up to 36 d in autumn, which is longer than expected if only used for pre-migratory fattening to cover the ca 2000 km to the Gulf of Oman. After entering the Arabian Sea via the Gulf of Oman, birds dispersed over the entire presumed winter range. Winter movements appear to correspond to the spatio-temporal patterns in primary production linked to seasonally changing monsoon winds. Th ese are not only the first tracks of Scandinavian red-necked phalaropes, but also the fi rst seabird tracks in the Arabian Sea, one of the most productive and dynamic marine areas on the planet

Monsoon drought over Java, Indonesia, during the past two centuries

Monsoon droughts, which often coincide with El Nino warm events, can have profound impacts on the populations of Southeast Asia. Improved understanding and prediction of such events can be aided by high-resolution proxy climate records, but these are scarce for the tropics. Here we reconstruct the boreal autumn (October-November) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for Java, Indonesia (1787-1988). This reconstruction is based on nine ring-width chronologies derived from living teak trees growing on the islands of Java and Sulawesi, and one coral delta O-18 series from Lombok. The PDSI reconstruction correlates significantly with El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-related sea surface temperatures and other historical and instrumental records of tropical climate, reflecting the strong coupling between the climate of Indonesia and the large scale tropical Indo-Pacific climate system.</p

Synchronous timing of return to breeding sites in a long-distance migratory seabird with ocean-scale variation in migration schedules

Background Migratory birds generally have tightly scheduled annual cycles, in which delays can have carry-over effects on the timing of later events, ultimately impacting reproductive output. Whether temporal carry-over effects are more pronounced among migrations over larger distances, with tighter schedules, is a largely unexplored question. Methods We tracked individual Arctic Skuas Stercorarius parasiticus, a long-distance migratory seabird, from eight breeding populations between Greenland and Siberia using light-level geolocators. We tested whether migration schedules among breeding populations differ as a function of their use of seven widely divergent wintering areas across the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Results Breeding at higher latitudes led not only to later reproduction and migration, but also faster spring migration and shorter time between return to the breeding area and clutch initiation. Wintering area was consistent within individuals among years; and more distant areas were associated with more time spent on migration and less time in the wintering areas. Skuas adjusted the period spent in the wintering area, regardless of migration distance, which buffered the variation in timing of autumn migration. Choice of wintering area had only minor effects on timing of return at the breeding area and timing of breeding and these effects were not consistent between breeding populations. Conclusion The lack of a consistent effect of wintering area on timing of return between breeding areas indicates that individuals synchronize their arrival with others in their population despite extensive individual differences in migration strategies

A Migratory Divide Among Red-Necked Phalaropes in the Western Palearctic Reveals Contrasting Migration and Wintering Movement Strategies

Non-breeding movement strategies of migratory birds may be expected to be flexibly adjusted to the distribution and quality of habitat, but only few studies compare movement strategies between populations using distinct migration routes and wintering areas. In thisour study, individual movement strategies of Rred-necked pPhalaropes Phalaropus lobatus, a long-distance migratory wader using saline waters in the non-breeding period, were studied using light-level geolocators. Results revealed the existence of two populations with distinct migration routes and wintering areas: one breeding in the north-eastern North Atlantic and migrating ca. 10,000 km oversea to the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean and the other breeding in Fennoscandia and Russia migrating ca. 6,000 km – largely over land – to the Arabian Sea (Indian Ocean). In line with our expectations, the transoceanic migration between the North Atlantic and the Pacific was associated with proportionately longer wings, a more even spread of stopovers in autumn and a higher migration speed in spring compared to the migration between Fennoscandian-Russian breeding grounds and the Arabian Sea. In the wintering period, birds wintering in the Pacific were stationaryresided in roughly a singlethe same area, whereas individuals wintering in the Arabian Sea showed individually consistent movementsd extensively between different areas, reflecting differences in spatio-temporal variation in primary productivity between the two wintering areas. Our study is unique in showing how habitat distribution shapes movement strategies over the entire non-breeding period within a species.Peer reviewe

Co‐developing guidance for conservation: An example for seabirds in the North‐East Atlantic in the face of climate change impacts

Conservation guidance—an authoritative source of information and recommendations explicitly supporting decision-making and action regarding nature conservation—represents an important tool to communicate evidence-based advice to conservation actors. Given the rapidly increasing pressure that climate change poses to biodiversity, producing accessible, well-informed guidance on how to best manage the impacts and risks of changing climatic conditions is particularly urgent. Guidance documents should ideally be produced with multistage input from stakeholders who are likely to use and implement such advice; however, this step can be complicated and costly, and remains largely unformalized. Moreover, there is currently little direct evidence synthesized for actions that specifically target climate change and guidance remains largely absent. Here, we introduce a process for co-developing guidance for species conservation in the face of climate change, using seabirds in the North-East Atlantic as a case study. Specifically, we collated evidence on climate change vulnerability and possible conservation actions using literature synthesis, stakeholder surveys, and ecological modeling. This evidence base was then discussed, refined, and expanded using structured stakeholder workshops. We summarize the knowledge gained through stakeholder engagement and provide recommendations for future international efforts to co-produce conservation guidance for managing wildlife, in the context of a rapidly changing climate.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Seabird Migration Strategies: Flight Budgets, Diel Activity Patterns, and Lunar Influence

Every year, billions of birds undertake extensive migrations between breeding and non-breeding areas, facing challenges that require behavioural adjustments, particularly to flight timing and duration. Such adjustments in daily activity patterns and the influence of extrinsic factors (e.g., environmental conditions, moonlight) have received much more research attention in terrestrial than marine migrants. Taking advantage of the widespread deployment in recent decades of combined light-level geolocator-immersion loggers, we investigated diel organisation and influence of the moon on flight activities during the non-breeding season of 21 migrant seabird species from a wide taxonomic range (6 families, 3 orders). Migrant seabirds regularly stopped (to either feed or rest) during migration, unlike some terrestrial and wetland birds which fly non-stop. We found an overall increase for most seabird species in time in flight and, for several species, also in flight bout duration, during migration compared to when resident at the non-breeding grounds. Additionally, several nocturnal species spent more of the day in flight during migration than at non-breeding areas, and vice versa for diurnal species. Nocturnal time in flight tended to increase during full moon, both during migration and at the non-breeding grounds, depending on species. Our study provides an extensive overview of activity patterns of migrant seabirds, paving the way for further research on the underlying mechanisms and drivers.</jats:p

Co-developing guidance for conservation: an example for seabirds in the North-East Atlantic in the face of climate change impacts

Conservation guidance—an authoritative source of information and recommendations explicitly supporting decision-making and action regarding nature conservation—represents an important tool to communicate evidence-based advice to conservation actors. Given the rapidly increasing pressure that climate change poses to biodiversity, producing accessible, well-informed guidance on how to best manage the impacts and risks of changing climatic conditions is particularly urgent. Guidance documents should ideally be produced with multistage input from stakeholders who are likely to use and implement such advice; however, this step can be complicated and costly, and remains largely unformalized. Moreover, there is currently little direct evidence synthesized for actions that specifically target climate change and guidance remains largely absent. Here, we introduce a process for co-developing guidance for species conservation in the face of climate change, using seabirds in the North-East Atlantic as a case study. Specifically, we collated evidence on climate change vulnerability and possible conservation actions using literature synthesis, stakeholder surveys, and ecological modeling. This evidence base was then discussed, refined, and expanded using structured stakeholder workshops. We summarize the knowledge gained through stakeholder engagement and provide recommendations for future international efforts to co-produce conservation guidance for managing wildlife, in the context of a rapidly changing climate

Seabirds linking Arctic and ocean

Throughout their annual cycle, migratory animals depend on widely separated areas for reproduction, fuelling migration, moulting and wintering. By migrating, animals link these areas. As conditions in one area can affect the behaviour or state of an individual in a next phase of the annual cycle, knowing the area use of migrants is important for understanding potential drivers of individual performance and population dynamics. For many species, however, basic information on their migration route, stopovers and wintering areas is lacking. Seabirds are well-represented among animals with the longest and most spectacular migrations. Only a few decades ago much of what was known about seabird migrations was based on land-based sightings or anecdotal at-sea observations, providing only a fragmentary and incomplete picture. Since the development and miniaturization of tracking devices, in particular light-based geolocators, details of seabird migrations are revealed at a fast pace. In this thesis, the migrations of a group of long-distance migratory seabirds breeding in Arctic tundra areas around the North-east Atlantic was studied: Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus, Grey Phalarope P fulicarius, Long-tailed Skua Stercorarius longicaudus and Arctic Skua S parasiticus. The main aims are to describe the non-breeding movements of each study species, reveal variation within individuals in migration routes, wintering areas, annual cycles and movement strategies relative to variation between individuals and populations, and link non-breeding movements with other activities in the annual cycle. In international collaborations, individuals were tracked – in some cases over up to five years – using light level geolocators from breeding sites between North-east Greenland and West Siberia. In chapter 2-3, Red-necked Phalaropes from Fennoscandian and Russian breeding areas were confirmed to migrate to the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean – a more or less two-step migration of ca 6000 km, involving a prolonged stopover at around 45°N during both autumn and spring migration. In contrast, Red-necked Phalaropes breeding in Greenland, Iceland and Scotland migrated ca 9000 km westwards to the northern Humboldt Current in the eastern Pacific. The longer migration to the eastern Pacific was associated with longer wings; more pointed wings may reduce flight costs on long migrations. Red-necked Phalaropes following these two flyways face contrasts in availability of saline stopover habitat en route and also in the spatio-temporal variability in upwelling conditions at the two wintering areas, which corresponded to differences in migration strategies as well as wintering movement strategies. Birds wintering in the eastern Pacific migrated generally in more steps and – in spring – at higher speed than those wintering in the Arabian Sea. Moreover, birds wintering in the eastern Pacific stayed at roughly a single site (residency), whereas birds wintering in the Arabian Sea moved considerable distances between sites (itinerancy). In chapter 4, Grey Phalaropes from North-east Greenland and Iceland were shown to migrate to three broad wintering areas across a wide latitudinal range in the Atlantic. These wintering areas were associated with different autumn and spring migration routes and stopover sites, as well as different degrees of movements within each wintering areas. Interestingly, two out of six individuals with more than one year of data switched from one year to the next between wintering areas ca 6500 km apart, indicating considerable individual flexibility. Moult (feather replacement) is important for maintaining the main functions of the plumage: insulation and flight. Moult is also energetically demanding and therefore, overlap with other demanding activities, such as breeding and migration, is usually avoided. In chapter 5, start date and duration of primary moult was studied in the four skua species breeding in the northern hemisphere. Among the four skua species, moult was finished at the start of spring migration. Therefore, longer moult durations of the larger species required an earlier start, resulting in temporal overlap with autumn migration. In the most extreme, moult overlapped with the entire autumn migration in Great Skuas. Excluding Great Skuas, the first moult cycle (in 2nd calender-year birds) lasted longer than later moult cycles, which can be attributed to migration limiting the time available for moult in 3rd calendar-year and older birds, but not in 2nd calender-year birds. Tracking individuals for multiple years allows the investigation of individual consistency in routes and area use. Using geolocator data of Long-tailed Skuas breeding in Greenland and Svalbard (subspecies S l pallescens) and those breeding in Scandinavia (subspecies S l longicaudus), individual consistency in non-breeding movements was quantified in chapter 6. Individuals of both subspecies migrated via a stopover area in the central North Atlantic to winter mainly off South-west Africa, with some individuals venturing into the Indian Ocean. Most individuals closely followed previous years’ movement patterns, but during the wintering period, up to ca 20% of the individuals deviated from earlier routes more than 1000 km. Remarkably, one individual switched mid-winter from the Benguela Current to the Falkland Current in two out of four years, using two distinct itineraries that were both repeated in later years. These results show flexibility in non-breeding movements during a part of the annual cycle, and strongly suggests extensive spatial memory of individual Long-tailed Skuas. Relying for reproduction on strongly cyclic rodent population sizes, Long-tailed Skuas face large annual variability in feeding conditions upon arrival at the breeding grounds. To survive unfavourable feeding conditions upon arrival at the breeding grounds or to start egg laying soon after arrival, migrants can bring body stores deposited on the wintering grounds or at staging areas along the migration route. In chapter 7, the contributions of distantly-acquired, marine resources (‘capital’) and locally-acquired, terrestrial resources (‘income’) in egg production were investigated in Lapland, Sweden, during a ten-year period with varying rodent densities, using stable isotope data of adult, juvenile and chick down feathers. With higher rodent density, contributions of locally-acquired terrestrial resources were larger whereas the contribution of distantly-acquired marine resources remained constant. Long-tailed Skuas arrive in the breeding area with large body stores, which they likely build up during a prolonged stopover in the central North Atlantic. Arctic Skuas breeding between Northeast Greenland and the Yamal peninsula (Russia), as shown in chapter 8, winter across the entire Atlantic, and also the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas. Within a single colony (Slettnes in northern Norway), the full range of wintering areas occurred, making this species ideal to quantify the relative effects of breeding and wintering area of the timing of migration and breeding. Beside a strong effect of breeding site on annual schedules, wintering area strongly affected the timing and duration of migration and the duration of the wintering period. Specifically, more distant wintering areas were associated with a substantially longer migration duration, a shorter wintering period, and an earlier departure to arrive in time on the breeding area. Breeding latitude not only shifted annual schedules but also affected the duration of phases in the annual cycle: spring migrations were faster and the time between arrival at the breeding grounds and clutch initiation shorter than at lower breeding latitudes. Whereas most Arctic Skuas wintering in the Atlantic used a spring stopover area in the central North Atlantic, time spent here was shorter for individuals that migrated later, with birds migrating from the Canary Current to breed on Svalbard skipping this stopover entirely. These shorter migrations and pre-laying periods suggest that birds breeding in the high Arctic carry body stores from the wintering areas across 60 latitudinal degrees. Among the four study species, data on population size and trends are lacking or scant. For Arctic Skuas, population trends and their drivers are relatively well-studied in Scotland, but potential causes of the declines of Arctic Skuas have remained poorly studied elsewhere. In chapter 9, a population decline of ca 50% over the past two decades is documented for the largest European colony at Slettnes, northern Norway. During five recent study years (2014-2018), both bottom-up (food shortage) and top-down (predation) effects negatively affected the reproductive investment and hatching success in this colony. Food shortage in three out of five recent study years was suggested by a high percentage of one-egg clutches, small eggs and low adult female body mass. At the same time, nest predation by Red Fox Vulpes vulpes increased, leading to total breeding failures in recent years, even when food availability appeared good. Clearly, the reproductive output in the study years was far below levels required to sustain a stable population, even with a high adult survival probability. In the concluding chapter 10, migration patterns and movements within the wintering areas are compared between the four study species. First, I show that the representativeness of the tracking datasets for the studied populations is generally high. By comparing movement behaviour across species and wintering areas, I show how the degree of itinerancy decrease and individual consistency increases with primary productivity and seasonal spatial stability of primary productivity of wintering areas. In the final part of the general discussion, I suggest potential directions for future studies and discuss threats and conservation of seabirds during the non-breeding season, including the question whether the studied seabirds will be able to adjust their non-breeding movements to rapid environmental changes. Considering differences between species in large scale-migration patterns, degree of migratory connectivity and individual flexibility, I argue there is little scope for adjustment in the Red-necked Phalarope, but more scope for adjustment of migration routes and wintering areas to rapid environmental change via developmental plasticity or individual flexibility in the Grey Phalarope, Long-tailed Skua and Arctic Skua.</p

Reliable genomic strategies for species classification of plant genetic resources

Background To address the need for easy and reliable species classification in plant genetic resources collections, we assessed the potential of five classifiers (Random Forest, Neighbour-Joining, 1-Nearest Neighbour, a conservative variety of 3-Nearest Neighbours and Naive Bayes) We investigated the effects of the number of accessions per species and misclassification rate on classification success, and validated theirs generic value results with three complete datasets. Results We found the conservative variety of 3-Nearest Neighbours to be the most reliable classifier when varying species representation and misclassification rate. Through the analysis of the three complete datasets, this finding showed generic value. Additionally, we present various options for marker selection for classification taks such as these. Conclusions Large-scale genomic data are increasingly being produced for genetic resources collections. These data are useful to address species classification issues regarding crop wild relatives, and improve genebank documentation. Implementation of a classification method that can improve the quality of bad datasets without gold standard training data is considered an innovative and efficient method to improve gene bank documentation