Brenda and Tony Gibbs Award | 2024

Funding cutting-edge ornithology
The Brenda and Tony Gibbs Award is funded by a legacy left to the BOU to specifically fund ‘research on tracking and migration studies including the use of new technologies’.

Awards up to £20,000 are aimed at funding discovery science, technological advances, high-profile conservation and research with societal impact that delivers a step change in the understanding of the movements and migrations of birds.

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2024 Award | £19,794

Pesticide effects on the migration and survival of Eurasian Skylarks Alauda arvensis

Principal Investigator
Dr Wieland Heim
Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Team members
Dr Alexandra Esther & Dr Kathrin Fisch, Julius-Kühn-Institute, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants
Prof. Dr Heiko Schmaljohann, Dr Thiemo Karwinkel & Georg Rüppel, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Project background
Worldwide, pesticide application has increased by 80% between 1990 and 2017 (Chemnitz et al. 2022), but little is known regarding the effects of these substances on migratory birds. Most studies of pesticides in connection to migratory birds focus on persistent and bio-accumulating carbamates, organophosphates and organochlorines (e.g. Klemens et al. 2000; Moore et al. 2018; Pratte et al. 2020).

Newer pesticides are under strict control, and most of these do not directly increase mortality but have more subtle effects on migratory birds (Gard et al. 1995). For example, neonicotinoid insecticides are now extensively used world-wide, and have recently been detected in a range of migratory bird species (e.g. Bishop et al. 2020; Poisson et al. 2021; Anderson et al. 2023).

Any pesticide effects on migratory performance are concerning because delays and disruptions to migration can have cascading negative effects on the birds’ breeding success and survival (Schmaljohann et al. 2022). During migration, birds concentrate at stopover sites, and pesticide applications at such sites could thus affect large proportions of a species´ population (Mendelssohn and Paz 1977). Many migratory species are experiencing dramatic population declines, in contrast to most sedentary bird species (Keller et al. 2020; Rigal et al. 2023). Although these declines can be attributed to a certain extent to various global change patterns, such as habitat destruction and fragmentation (Keller et al. 2020; Rigal et al. 2023), significant contributions of pesticides on these population declines are expected (Mineau and Whiteside 2013; Chiron et al. 2014; Li et al. 2020; Rigal et al. 2023).

It is unknown for most current-use pesticides if they entail immediate and delayed fitness costs by affecting body condition and migration behaviour of free-flying migratory birds, and whether these effects could lead to reduced survival rates, which could have population-level consequences.

Project aims
This project aims to investigate the effects of pesticides on body condition, migration behaviour and survival of migratory birds.

The recent establishment of a large-scale array of receiver stations as part of the MOTUS collaborative initiative in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands opens up new possibilities for the study of migratory bird species that are too small for alternative tracking techniques. The miniaturization of radio-tracking devices enables the movements of songbirds to be followed for more than one year. This project will use the MOTUS radio-tracking system to study not only the migration behaviour, but also, for the first time, the survival of migratory birds.

Wieland and his team will use the Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis as a model species. The Eurasian Skylark is a common migratory songbird that is known to be prone to pesticide exposure (Esther et al. 2022) and is of conservation concern due to dramatic declines of its Western European breeding populations (Keller et al. 2020).

The results of the planned project will provide crucial information not only for conservationists and ecologists, but also for policy, plant protection, and pesticide developers.

References
Anderson MJ, Valdiviezo A, Conway MH, et al (2023) Imidacloprid exposure is detectable in over one third of wild bird samples from diverse Texas ecoregions. Science of the Total Environment 876:162723

Bishop CA, Woundneh MB, Maisonneuve F, et al (2020) Determination of neonicotinoids and butenolide residues in avian and insect pollinators and their ambient environment in Western Canada (2017, 2018). Science of the Total Environment 737:139386

Chemnitz C, Wenz K, Haffmans S (2022) Pestizidatlas. Daten und Fakten zu Giften in der Landwirtschaft Paderborn, Germany, Bonifatius Druck

Chiron F, Chargé R, Julliard R, et al (2014) Pesticide doses, landscape structure and their relative effects on farmland birds. Agric Ecosyst Environ 185:153–160

Esther A, Schenke D, Heim W (2022) Noninvasively collected fecal samples as indicators of multiple pesticide exposure in wild birds. Environ Toxicol Chem 41:201–207

Gard NW, Hooper MJ, Bennett R (1995) An assessment of potential hazards of pesticides and environmental contaminants. Ecology and management of Neotropical migratory birds: a synthesis and review of critical issues Oxford University Press, New York, NY 294–310

Keller V, Herrando S, Voríšek P, et al (2020) European Breeding Bird Atlas 2: Distribution, Abundance and Change. European Bird Census Council & Lynx Edicions, Barcelona

Klemens JA, Harper RG, Frick JA, et al (2000) Patterns of organochlorine pesticide contamination in neotropical migrant passerines in relation to diet and winter habitat. Chemosphere 41:1107–1113

Li Y, Miao R, Khanna M (2020) Neonicotinoids and decline in bird biodiversity in the United States. Nat Sustain 3:1027–1035

Mendelssohn H, Paz U (1977) Mass mortality of birds of prey caused by Azodrin, an organophosphorus insecticide. Biol Conserv 11:163–170

Mineau P, Whiteside M (2013) Pesticide acute toxicity is a better correlate of US grassland bird declines than agricultural intensification. PLoS One 8:e57457

Moore DRJ, Priest CD, Olson AD, Teed RS (2018) A probabilistic risk assessment for the Kirtland’s warbler potentially exposed to chlorpyrifos and malathion during the breeding season and migration. Integr Environ Assess Manag 14:252–269

Poisson M, Garrett DR, Sigouin A, et al (2021) Assessing pesticides exposure effects on the reproductive performance of a declining aerial insectivore. Ecological Applications 31:e02415

Pratte I, Noble DG, Mallory ML, et al (2020) The influence of migration patterns on exposure to contaminants in Nearctic shorebirds: a historical study. Environ Monit Assess 192:256

Rigal S, Dakos V, Alonso H, et al (2023) Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120:e2216573120

Schmaljohann H, Eikenaar C, Sapir N (2022) Understanding the ecological and evolutionary function of stopover in migrating birds. Biological Reviews 97:1231–1252

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Images
Eurasian skylark Alauda arvensis | Marton Berntsen CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons