| Description: | One of the prime ecological effects of climate change is that seasonal timing of organisms changes. As springs get warmer, trees leave out earlier, caterpillars that depend on these trees hatch earlier, and birds that feed these caterpillars to their nestlings need to advance as well. Not all organisms do respond at the same rate, which results in phenological mismatches. Especially long-distance migrant birds are vulnerable for these mismatches, as they have little information on their distant wintering grounds on the progress of spring at their breeding sites. The question in our research is whether and how these birds adapt to climate change, and what the potential ecological consequences are of differential responses. In this talk I will present the research we perform in the forests around ASTRON, and particularly show how pied flycatchers have adapted to climate change over the last 50 years, and whether it is contemporary evolution that we observe. I will show the different pathways of annual cycle adjustments that might be responsible for the patterns we observe. |
