Shrinking shorebird pays the bill for rapid Arctic warming while wintering in the tropics
Red knots migrate between their breeding grounds in the Arctic and their wintering grounds in West Africa. Chicks currently born under rapidly warming conditions attain smaller sizes before migration starts, because they miss the insect peak. If they reach their wintering grounds in the tropics, they are faced with a second disadvantage: their shorter bills cannot reach their favourite shellfish food. This results in an evolutionary force towards smaller-sized birds with large bills.
These findings will be published Friday 13 May 2016 in Science by an international team of researchers from the Netherlands (NIOZ and Univ. Groningen), Australia, France, Poland and Russia.
Source: Press Release NIOZ Royal Netherlands Istitute for Sea Research
| Last modified: | 13 March 2020 02.09 a.m. |
More news
-
18 November 2022
Four FSE researchers receive NWO XS grant for bold research
Four researchers of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) have received an ENW-XS grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). These grants are awarded to encourage curiosity-driven and bold...
-
07 November 2022
Wouter Roos partner in EIC Pathfinder project
EIC Pathfinder grants are intended to support research teams in investigating or developing an emerging breakthrough technology.
-
03 November 2022
Maria Antonietta Loi and Jan Anton Koster partners in Horizon Europe consortia
What is special about these grants is that they come under the Global Challenges & European Industrial Competitiveness branch of Horizon Europe. This means that the technological application has already been considered.