Climate change in the monsoonal tropics: a long-term study in purple-crowned fairy-wrens
Institute Seminar by Anne Peters
- Date: Jan 9, 2024
- Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Anne Peters
- Anne has been studying fairy-wrens for 25 years: ever since discovering them on her first visit to Australia, these charismatic birds have kept her captivated. After her MSc at Nijmegen University, she started studying the superb blue wrens of the south-east for her PhD at Australian National University. In 2002 she moved to Germany, where she spent 10 years at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (Seewiesen, Radolfzell), before moving to Monash University in Melbourne . However, she stayed true to fairy-wrens, now focusing on purple-crowneds in the far north-west, where she has closely followed a colour-banded population continuously since 2005, funded first through the MPG Minerva Program, followed by the Australian Research Council through a Future Fellowship and successive Discovery Program grants. Currently Anne is a professor in Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology and deputy Head of School in the School of Biological Sciences.
- Location: Hybrid meeting
- Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Möggingen + Online
- Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
- Contact: fiedler@ab.mpg.de
Since 2005, my research group has been studying ecology and behaviour of purple-crowned fairy-wrens. They are endangered cooperatively breeding birds inhabiting riparian zones in the monsoonal savanna of NW-Australia. We follow individually marked birds throughout life to establish their movements, breeding attempts, lifespan, and lifetime reproduction. Here, I will present some results on how these birds deal with their unpredictable climatic conditions and the threats in their environment. I will explain how we used telomeres, DNA caps that protect chromosomes and act as a biomarker of fitness, to identify threats from climate change in young birds. I will discuss potential implications for population persistence, as well as current and future research directions.
The MPI-AB Seminar Series is open to members of MPI and Uni Konstanz. The zoom link is published each week in the MPI-AB newsletter.