Description du projet
Un dispositif multicapteurs innovant pour suivre les oiseaux migrateurs
Les migrations aviaires présentent un caractère remarquable. Les oiseaux migrateurs parcourent en effet des centaines, voire des milliers de kilomètres pour se nourrir, se reproduire et élever leurs petits. Les technologies de suivi élaborées au cours de la dernière décennie ont révélé qu’ils ont la capacité de voler plus longtemps et plus rapidement que ce que l’on pensait auparavant. Toutefois, on ne sait toujours pas comment les oiseaux effectuent ces voyages en apparence impossibles. Le projet MigPerform, financé par le CER, étudiera les contraintes, ainsi que les adaptations comportementales et physiologiques qui ont évolué pour les surmonter, et ce afin de comprendre ce qui a rendu possible les performances extrêmes des espèces migratrices. Il s’appuiera pour cela sur de nouveaux dispositifs de suivi: des enregistreurs de données multicapteurs capables de saisir des schémas et des comportements spatio-temporels, notamment les altitudes de vol, la température et le calendrier détaillé des trajets et des escales pendant tout le cycle de la migration.
Objectif
Advances in tracking technology during the last decade have shown that migratory birds have the capacity to fly longer and faster than we previously thought was possible. Yet, we do not know how birds perform these seemingly impossible travels as it previously only was possible to record spatiotemporal patterns.
The overall aim of this project is to reveal constraints and the behavioural and physiological adaptations that has evolved to overcome them, thus making the extreme performances of migratory birds possible. This goal will be met by using novel tracking devices, multisensor data loggers, that in addition to spatiotemporal patterns also record behaviour, including flight altitudes, temperature and detailed timing of flights and stopovers during the entire migration cycle. The few multisensor tracking studies carried out to date have provided hints of stunning new insights, and seriously challenged previously assumed limits on peak flight altitudes, in-flight changes of altitudes, and duration of individual flights. In particular, I have together with colleagues discovered a totally unexpected altitudinal behaviour: some bird species change their flight altitude between night and day, and fly at extremely high altitudes during the day (up to 6000-8000 m). But what makes a migratory bird fly as high as Mount Everest, even when there are no mountains to cross?
By launching an extensive multisensor data logging programme, combined with wind tunnel experiments and field studies, the proposed project will change our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of bird migration. This will be done by disentangling the causes and consequences of bird’s altitudinal behaviour, the flexibility, timing and duration of migratory flights (if birds only use diurnal or nocturnal flights, if they prolong flights to last both day and night or even fly nonstop between wintering and breeding grounds), and the costs and consequences of these seemingly extreme behaviours.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institution d’accueil
22100 Lund
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