The lives of migratory birds breeding in Europe and wintering in Africa south of the Sahara are governed by environmental conditions experienced thousands of kilometres apart. In this paper, Marjorie Sorensen cleverly measured isotopes and hormones deposited in growing feathers to track the conditions experienced by Great Reed Warblers en route through Africa. She shows that the rainfall conditions these birds experienced in the Horn of Africa, a staging post between Europe and southern Africa, affect their condition on their main wintering grounds in Zambia… read more in the article by Marjorie Sorensen, Graham Fairhurst, Susanne Jenni-Eiermann, Jason Newton, Elizabeth Yohannes and Claire Spottiswoode, available Open Access in BMC Ecology.
New paper on coevolution and chase-away evolution
Our paper “Chase-away evolution maintains imperfect mimicry in a brood parasite–host system despite rapid evolution of mimics” has been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.