CAnMove

Research

My research projects related to the CAnMove project are:

1. Immunoecology studies of birds; Parasite-mediated cost of migration. Because immune functions are costly they should have become adapted to the host’s parasite exposure. In particular, bird species/populations inhabiting tropical areas (tropical breeders and long-distance migrants wintering in the tropics) will often be exposed to a higher diversity of parasites than sedentary and short-distance migrating species staying year round in the temperate region. I would like to study sedentary temperate and tropical migrant birds to evaluate to what extent different aspects of immune function is adapted to the parasite exposure faced by the host. In collaboration with Å Lindström, I have also studied cost of endurance flight in terms of suppressed immune function in birds flying in a windtunnel.
2. Light-logger study of great reed warblers in combination with stable isotope analysis. The aim is to reveal time and route of migration, and identification of moulting and wintering areas in a tropical migrant with a possible loop migration pattern. Our previous studies show that malaria-infected great reed warblers seem to inhabit dryer, more northern wintering areas in West-Africa – a light logger study could give us detailed information about such patterns as well as timing and location of stopovers (coll. S Bensch).
3. Avian malaria. Investigate malaria parasites exposure and specific immune responses in individual birds in tropical migrants and sedentary birds (coll. S Bensch).