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First published online February 15, 2008
Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 649-653 (2008)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2008
doi: 10.1242/jeb.014183
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Food intake and fuel deposition in a migratory bird is affected by multiple as well as single-step changes in the magnetic field

Ian Henshaw1,*, Thord Fransson2, Sven Jakobsson1, Johan Lind1, Adrian Vallin1 and Cecilia Kullberg1

1 Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
2 Swedish Museum of Natural History, Bird Ringing Centre, Box 50 007, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden

* Author for correspondence (e-mail: ian.henshaw{at}zoologi.su.se)

Accepted 2 January 2008

Recent studies have shown that migratory thrush nightingales (Luscinia luscinia) experimentally treated with multiple changes of the magnetic field simulating a journey to their target stopover area in northern Egypt, increased fuel deposition as expected in preparation to cross the Sahara desert. To investigate the significance of food intake on the body mass changes observed, in the work described here we analysed food intake of the nightingales under study in those earlier experiments. Furthermore, to study whether a single change in the magnetic field directly to northern Egypt is sufficient to provide information for fuelling decisions, we performed a new experiment, exposing thrush nightingales trapped in Sweden, directly to a magnetic field of northern Egypt. Our results show that an experimentally induced magnetic field of northern Egypt, close to the barrier crossing, triggers the same response in fuel deposition as experiments with multiple changes of the magnetic field simulating a migratory journey from Sweden to Egypt, suggesting that migratory birds do not require successive changes in field parameters to incorporate magnetic information into their migratory program. Furthermore, irrespective of experimental set up (single or multiple changes of the magnetic field parameters) increase in food intake seems to be the major reason for the observed increase in fuelling rate compared with control birds, suggesting that geomagnetic information might trigger hormonal changes in migratory birds enabling appropriate fuelling behaviour during migration.

Key words: geomagnetic cues, bird migration, food intake, fuel deposition


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