Abstract
Human-induced global change forces species to adapt to modified environments. Failure to do so may cause extinction. Long-distance migrants often show insufficient responses to global change, negatively impacting populations world-wide. This seems paradoxical, since migrants evolved life-styles to benefit from seasonal, but spatially separated, environments. Causes of insufficient adjustment are poorly understood, even in well-studied migrants. The pied flycatcher is intensively studied at the breeding grounds and has become the model for climate-change adaption in migratory birds. Birds are pressed to advance breeding arrival to meet earlier springs in Europe. But as for most songbirds, the importance of their African wintering sites for timely arrival is poorly understood. By year-round tracking and investigating seasonal interactions, I will be the first to explicitly link ecological conditions in winter to timing decisions and fitness in Afro-Palearctic migrants. I hypothesize that wintering conditions are paramount for their ability to adapt to climate warming, because harsh ecological conditions at African wintering sites likely impact the preparation and timing of migration, inheritance of arrival date and fitness. I combine (1) multi-year annual-cycle tracking from wintering and various breeding grounds, (2) in-depth ecological research at the wintering grounds (including DNA-based diet analyses), (3) long-term data of a Dutch breeding population to investigate environmental effects on inheritance of arrival dates and fitness consequences. This project will illuminate if non-breeding conditions limit timing adjustments to climate change, or likely do so in the future, due to deterioration of wintering habitats from deforestation and increasing droughts. As common cavity nesters, pied flycatchers are uniquely possessed to integrate high-quality breeding and tracking data with wintering research. These insights form a backbone for understanding the adaptive capacities of many other migrants, by identifying bottlenecks and conservation actions that help migrants to maintain viable life-styles.
Netherlands