Projects

A collaborative project with wildlife rescue centres across Europe to understand how heatwaves and extreme weather affect swift nestlings and fledglings, using large-scale rescue and admission data.

How do heatwaves and other extreme weather events affect wild Alpine swifts during their development, throughout their lives, and across generations? This project combines field experiments, long-term monitoring, ecophysiology and quantitative genetics in a wild, urban-nesting aerial insectivore.

How flexibly can Alpine swifts (Tachymarptis melba) adjust their migration behaviour to a changing environment? We use 15+ years of light-level geolocator and GPS tracking, combined with a long-term pedigree, to estimate the repeatability and heritability of migration timing, routes and schedules.

Drivers of changes of body shape and size in adult Alpine swifts, is there an effect of climate change? Towards an integrative approach to understand the underlying mechanisms, the consequences across the lifespan, and improve our predictive ability.

Food hoarding of pygmy owls. Description of the behaviour, age and sex differences, changes in relation to the main prey abundance and effects of weather conditions.