Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Comparative Fuel Use and Protein Conservation in Trans-Saharan Passerine Migrants

每年春天，来自185个物种的大约24亿只鸟从它们的非洲越冬地迁徙到古北极繁殖。这些迁徙者共有185个物种，其中大多数是以昆虫为食的小型雀形目动物。小型雀形目动物的长途迁徙在生理学上很有趣，因为它结合了两种完全不同的生理状态：禁食和高有氧运动。本项目将以东半球林莺（Sylviidae）为模型，研究长距离春季迁徙雀形目鸟类的燃料使用和蛋白质保护。短距离、中距离和长距离的移民（西尔维亚·斯普）将在以色列的塞德·博克（Sede Boker）捕获。飞行和蛋白质分解代谢中使用的燃料的变化将与能量储备和迁移距离的影响相关。该项目有望为运动生理学、禁食生物学和迁移生理学增加新的理解水平，并有望拓宽我们对这些过程如何协同工作的理解。

9623836 Rubenstein Every spring approximately 2.4 billion birds from 185 species migrate from their African wintering grounds to breed in the Palaearctic. The migrants are members of 185 species and the majority are small insect eating passerines. Long distance migration in small passerines is physiologically intriguing because it combines elements from two disparate physiological states: fasting and high aerobic exercise. This project will use Old World warblers (Sylviidae) as a model to study the fuel use and protein conservation of long-distance vernal migrating passerines. Short, medium and long distance migrants (Sylvia spp) will be captured mid-migration in Sede Boker, Israel. Variation in fuels used in flight and protein catabolism will be correlated with the effects of energy reserves and migration distance. This project promises to add new levels of understanding to exercise physiology, fasting biology and migration physiology and promises to broaden our understanding of how these processes can work in concert.