Project R-9983

Assessing the effects of global change on avian migratory pathways: the case of the European Nightjar. (Research)

In the current epoch, the Anthropocene, our environment experiences many threats, including ecosystem alteration and climate change. As a consequence, we are witnessing global environmental change and an alarming rate of biodiversity loss. Populations of migratory species could be particularly vulnerable to global change because they are influenced by threats in different geographical areas of the world at different times in the annual cycle. Previous studies assessing the effects of global change on populations of migratory species have mainly focused on changes in the timing of the annual cycle and are heavily biased towards studying these effects during the breeding season. Moreover, most studies focus on assessing the effects of climate change populations, although changes in land use have been reported to also strongly affect various taxa. Birds form an interesting group to study the possible effects of environmental changes on population dynamics as most species are quick responders to such changes. In this project, we will study the effects of global change, mainly focused on land use change, on the migration ecology of European birds. Our project will focus on assessing the migration ecology of the European Nightjar, a crepuscular bird species which migrates to Central Africa. Nightjars relies on important European and African stopover zones before crossing ecological barriers. Both the wintering and stopover sites are used by many European migratory bird species, and under severe threat due to global change.

01 October 2019 - 30 September 2023