How are birds responding and adapting to global changes?

We have two main lines of research. Firstly, we are studying the role of phenotypic plasticity and microevolution in the responses of birds to global warming. Although plasticity allows immediate responses to changes in the environment, microevolutionary responses are essential to ensure long-term adaptations and population persistence. Secondly, because the quality of food is as important, if not more so, than the quantity, and because global warming does not affect aquatic and terrestrial insects in the same way, we are studying the consequences of global warming on the proportion of aquatic insects compared with terrestrial insects in the diet of insectivorous birds.

We are using long-term data to study changes in phenotype and pedigree information on the same individuals to model the heritability of traits and to understand the importance of microevolution in driving these changes. We are using archived and newly collected data (feather isotopes, metabarcoding) to obtain new information on the diet of Alpine swifts, GPS loggers to find out when and where swifts forage, and experimental approaches to test the effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are more abundant in aquatic insects, on the reproduction and survival of insectivorous birds.

• Julien Martin, University of Ottawa
• Antoine Stier, CNRS Stasbourg

• Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship, European Union
• Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada
• Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France