Moving forward with cheetah research and conservation

This blog post is provided by Cédric Scherer and Jörg Melzheimer after winning the ‘pretty map’ category of MoveMapCompetition from the BES Movement Ecology SIG The cheetah is the rarest big cat species in Africa and its numbers have substantially decreased over the last decades to now less than 7,000 adult individuals. In central Namibia, one of the most important strongholds of the species, the cheetahs … Continue reading Moving forward with cheetah research and conservation

Social networks and disease transmission – A story of giraffes

World Giraffe Day celebrates the longest-necked animal on the longest day (or night, depending on your hemisphere!) of the year – 21st June.  Yet many aspects of giraffe ecology remain poorly studied.  Dr Kim VanderWaal, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, studies how animal social behaviour translates into contact networks and pathogen transmission patterns.  To mark World Giraffe Day, she tells us about her … Continue reading Social networks and disease transmission – A story of giraffes

Drifting birds of prey use predictable winds during migration

European Honey Buzzards Pernis apivorus soaring in the wind.
European Honey Buzzards Pernis apivorus soaring in the wind.

This post is a press release from the authors of Journal of Animal Ecology paper “Seasonal detours by soaring migrants shaped by wind regimes along the East Atlantic Flyway” by Wouter M. G. Vansteelant et al. Issued by University of Amsterdam.

Birds of prey let themselves be carried by predictable winds
At the start of autumn, several billion migratory birds take flight for a long, adventurous journey to Africa. How do they manage to complete this difficult journey successfully year after year? To find out, a team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) tracked the behaviour of migrating European honey buzzards using small GPS backpacks. They combined GPS data with meteorological models to show how these migratory birds travel via complicated detours to make use of predictable weather patterns. They do so especially over the Sahara Desert, an inhospitable landscape they need to cross as quickly as possible. Continue reading “Drifting birds of prey use predictable winds during migration”

East Africa’s Elephant Architects

I can see elephants in my backyard—at least fifteen of them, youngsters and grownups. They are a few hundred meters off, but distinctive amongst the thorn trees, and my eyes drift to them every time I look up from the computer screen. In the 12 years that I’ve been working here at the Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya’s Laikipia Highlands, elephants have grown both … Continue reading East Africa’s Elephant Architects