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
-
30 July 2020
Restanten van een vergeten bolhoop ontdekt rond de Melkweg
Restanten van een vergeten bolhoop ontdekt rond de Melkweg
-
28 July 2020
Resilience and Adaptability: New pathways with Skyrmion bubbles
Researchers from the University of Groningen and TU Wien have detected signatures of the skew scattering in the ferromagnetic conductor, SrRuO3, associated with topological magnetic bubbles. This effect showed a surprising adaptability to different...
-
28 July 2020
Populaties trekvissen wereldwijd met driekwart geslonken
Een nieuw internationaal onderzoek laat zien dat bestanden van trekkende zoetwatervissen zoals zalm, paling en houting in de afgelopen vijftig jaar met 76% zijn afgenomen. In Europa is de afname met 93% het grootste. De trekvissen hebben het vooral...