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Path integration

Adelaide Sibeaux 1 , Cait Newport1, Jonathan P. Green1, Cecilia Karlsson 2, Jacob Engelmann 3 & Theresa Burt de Perera1 have recently published a paper showing that fishes as well as other animals use path integration to find their way home.   I believe this is very important and probably the main way we navigate. Path integration maybe the way…

A conceptual framework on the role of magnetic cues in songbird migration ecology

This paper is difficult to understand but it summarises the work on animal navigation to date.  The key is that all the research which is confident that animals navigate using magnetic cues are not necessarily the whole story and that all navigators use all the clues they can get to help them.  Recently there was…

Atlantic herring use a time-compensated sun compass for orientation

Lisa Spiecker1,*,‡, Malien Laurien1,*, Wiebke Dammann1, Andrea Franke2,3, Catriona Clemmesen4 and Gabriele Gerlach1,2 ABSTRACT Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), an ecologically and economically important species in the northern hemisphere, shows pronounced seasonal migratory behaviour. To follow distinctive migration patterns over hundreds of kilometers between feeding, overwintering and spawning grounds, they are probably guided by orientation mechanisms. We…

Light pollution is important

Atchoi, E., Mitkus, M., Vitta, P., Machado, B., Rocha, M., Juliano, M., Bried, J. & Rodríguez, A. 2023 Ontogenetic exposure to light influences seabird vulnerability to light pollution. Journal of Experimental Biology 226. doi: 10.1242/jeb.245126. Atchoi 2023 (no pdf) Light pollution critically affects the fledglings of burrow-nesting seabirds, leading to massive mortality events. The successful management of this pollutant depends…