Early morning start 😴 but on my way to the joint ringers conference between Radolfzell and Helgoland to present some results about bird-tick interactions won through standardized monitoring of breeding birds ☺️
New Paper alert 📄
Rüppel et al. 2026 - "movetrack: An R package to model flight paths from radio-telemetry networks"
-> this makes it possible to transform station-based radiotelemetry data into actual flight path, validated with a plane flight.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz @unimainz.bsky.social on the role of time in avian trade-offs. All welcome in person in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk 3.30pm on 6 March. Also live-streamed: details available ⬇️
Embedded tick with heart shaped scutum, and words “I’m stuck on you!” Happy Valentines Day to all who read this!
Happy Valentines Day!
❤️
wonderful female scientists I have the pleasure to work with
girl power for the win! amazing, appreciative, brave, clever, curious, creative, funky, funny, inspirational, persistent, supportive, stubborn (if needed), wonderful, visionary – and simply the best #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience #WomenInScience thank you!
Differences in (A) blood telomere length and (B) mitochondrial copy number between migrant and resident blackbirds Turdus merula sampled on Helgoland Island during autumn migration
🧬 Excited to present some of our recent research on 🐦⬛:
(1/3) Contrary to expectations, migratory Eurasian blackbirds had longer telomeres than residents at a major stopover (Helgoland), despite similar mitochondrial DNA copy numbers
🔗 #OpenAccess
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
New study shows that Cataglyphis hellenica 🐜 learns a nest direction by using a magnetic compass 🧲🧭. Demonstrating that a magnetic compass is widespread in Cataglyphis ants. @chiaratenne.bsky.social @cataglyphilosophy.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Common Tern Museum at the Bantersee
Common Tern Museum at the Bantersee
View of the ice-bound Waddensee
Profs Miriam Liedvogel & Prof Sandra Bouwhuis - brilliant leaders of the Institute of Avian Research (with some old German ornithological leaders in the background)
A richly rewarding two days reviewing @ifv-whv.bsky.social: thriving under the brilliant leadership of Sandra Bouwhuis & Miriam Liedvogel. An exciting programme of research into avian migration & life histories with many future stars. Outstanding @commonternproject.bsky.social museum by frozen sea!
New preprint! 🐥🦠🏝️
We study a great speciator, the silvereye, to test whether parasites follow island biogeography rules, and find that parasite diversity and isolation effects depend strongly on transmission strategy.
Led by PhD student Sarah Nichols.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Adult gull-billed tern landing with prey to feed its chick, runing towards the parent. Background with flying gull-billed tern silhouettes. Beautiful illustration by @co-la.bsky.social
Gull-billed terns for the win! Anna’s final PhD chapter published in Evol Applications doi.org/10.1111/eva.... Thanks to all lovely collaborators, especially @commonternproject.bsky.social @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social
@robertrollins1892.bsky.social & @dornitholges.bsky.social for funding
Out now in ‘Evolutionary applications’, the last chapter of Anna’s PhD thesis, in which she used whole genome sequencing data of contemporary and historic European gull-billed terns to assess whether the population decline in part of their range has had genetic consequences: doi.org/10.1111/eva....
I'm happy to share with you our new paper out now in Environmental Pollution!
Here, we experimentally studied the maternal offloading of mercury pollution via reproduction in an avian model species.
Read the paper here for more details👇
doi.org/10.1016/j.en...
And to add some more beauty to the internet: here's a close-up of Dr Schnelle, with her gorgeous hat crafted skillfully by various members of the @ifv-whv.bsky.social, fired on by @robertrollins1892.bsky.social. 🥰
Andrea wearing her PhD hat after successfully defending her thesis.
Congratulations, Dr. Andrea. What a very special day. Happy, proud and honoured to see you fledge 🐦⬛🧬🏝️🧪 - fly on @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social
Robin team with T30 - field work on a partial migratory robin population in Northern Germany.
spring has sprung and the #dreamteam is out in the forest. first #geolocator robins have been spotted and data already secured - such exciting times. we use #lotek radiotelemetry and light and pressure loggers to understand partial #migration in a European #robin population in Northern Germany.
Happy to share our new publication on the effect of inbreeding on male fertility and sperm senescence, out now in @royalsocietypublishing.org.
Many thanks to @oscarvedder.bsky.social, @btschirren.bsky.social and @ifv-whv.bsky.social.
Take a look below if you want to know more about this work👇😉
Freshly out in Environmental Pollution – Anna’s new paper in which she assesses mercury pollution in the last and endangered population of gull-billed terns in Central Europe, breeding at Neufelderkoog, a heavily mercury-polluted area: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...
New publication in @animalecology.bsky.social by @oscarvedder.bsky.social & @matteobeccardi.bsky.social 'Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long-term experiment in a precocial bird'
doi.org/10.1111/1365...
Thank you to @genmig.bsky.social for supporting this project and everyone at the @ifv-whv.bsky.social who took part in this. Also thank you to the amazing colleagues who are not on Bluesky: Lidia Chitimia-Dobler and Anna Obiegala.
I am very excited to announce our new paper describing the tick communities on Helgoland. We highlighted a potentially stable population of a tick species which has not been described in Germany since the 1970s! Feel free to reach out if you have questions 😄
doi.org/10.1007/s004...
Happy to share our new paper OA in Genetics. We show that population genomic methods based on ARGs (ancestral recombination graphs i.e. genetic ancestry along chromosomes) for demography inference can be biased when applied to genomes with wide high-recombining regions. doi.org/10.1093/gene...
Excited to share my first paper with the Liedvogel lab @genmig.bsky.social at @ifv-whv.bsky.social:
Together with @jpartecke.bsky.social from the @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social and many others, we looked at the genetics of partial migration in blackbirds onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Welcome to the new blue sky account of the Institute of Avian Research in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Here we will post updates on science, news and outreach of our Institute: ifv-vogelwarte.de/en/home
Please spread! The newly established CF Genomics at UOL is re-advertising a position for a bioinformatician uol.de/en/job/bioin...
Figure 1 from the article: Schematic overview of the geographic distributions of the four major tick genera (Amblyomma (yellow), Ixodes (orange), Haemaphysalis (green), Hyalomma (blue)) found on birds within the African–Western Palearctic region
Figure 4 from the article: Point estimates for tick species/migratory season interactions for all tick species in the reported dataset.
NEW PAPER: a detailed overview of the current state of research on hard tick movement on migratory birds along the African–Western Palearctic flyways, investigating the role of bird species and migratory season.
➡️ https://vist.ly/3mqeyny
#ornithology #migration #disease #birds
Wide spectrum of tick-borne pathogens in juvenile Ixodes ricinus collected from autumn-migrating birds in the Vistula River Valley, Poland | bmcvetres.biomedcent... | BMC Veterinary Research | #ornithology 🪶
