Dissertation Research: Repeatability of Heart Rate During Natural Migratory Flight in a Small Passerine Bird

更广泛的影响索尼影业公司的电影《飞翔的迁徙》最近的成功清楚地表明，世界各地数十亿只鸟类的奇妙年度迁徙能够像其他几个自然事件那样激发人类的兴趣和想象力。候鸟是世界各地生态系统的重要组成部分，然而这些鸟类生活的地方正在被破坏或改变，人类如果想要防止它们的灭绝，就必须对它们有更多的了解。迁徙的一个关键组成部分是迁徙本身；一旦鸟儿飞到空中会发生什么。大气条件、个体大小和体型以及健康和经验等其他因素都应该影响迁徙飞行中使用的能量，从而影响鸟类何时何地停下来补充燃料。这里提出的工作，特别是开发一个大气模型来研究风、温度和湍流对飞行过程中能源使用的影响，是了解是什么决定了迁徙飞行的能源成本的第一步。随着全球气候变化和候鸟被迫适应，了解大气条件对候鸟策略的影响对普通后院观鸟者可能变得特别重要。智力价值最近的技术发展已经产生了~1G无线电发射器，使科学家能够测量小型(~30克)鸟类的心率。由于能量消耗可以根据心率计算，因此可以测量鸟类在野外自然飞行时消耗的能量。这里提出的工作将包括测量小型鸣禽在迁徙飞行中使用的能量，并检查个体之间的能量使用差异，以更好地了解迁徙的成本，并测试关于机翼设计的空气动力学理论的某些预测。验证这些预测将使改进鸟类飞行模型成为可能，并可能有助于突出进化塑造许多鸟类翅膀的机制。只要有可能，每只鸟的数据将在两次飞行中获得，这样不会在两次飞行之间改变的变量(如机翼形状)的影响可以与确实改变的变量(如大气条件和身体质量)的影响分开。在这项工作过程中收集的数据以前从未收集过，这仅仅是因为技术尚未获得；它将很好地补充在风洞中或在迁徙过程中捕获的鸟类上进行的迁徙生理和行为研究。

Broader Impacts The recent success of Sony Pictures film Winged Migration clearly demonstrates that the fantastic annual movements of literally billions of birds around the world can capture human interest and imagination like few other natural events. Migratory birds are an important part of ecosystems all over the world, yet the places where these birds live are being destroyed or changed and humans will have to learn more about them if they want to prevent their extinction. A key component of migration is the movement itself; what happens once the birds are in the air. Atmospheric conditions, individual size and shape and other factors such as health and experience should all affect the energy used during migratory flight and thus affect when and where birds stop to refuel. The work proposed here, particularly the development of an atmospheric model to examine the effects of wind, temperature and turbulence on energy use during flight, is a first step in understanding what determines the energetic cost of migratory flight. Understanding the effects of atmospheric conditions on migratory strategies may become particularly important for the average backyard birder as the global climate changes and migratory birds are forced to adapt. Intellectual Merit Recent technological developments have resulted in ~1g radio transmitters that allow scientists to measure the heart rates of small (~30g) birds. Since energy expenditure can be calculated from heart rate, it is possible to measure how much energy birds use while flying naturally, in the wild. The work proposed here will involve measuring the amount of energy small songbirds use during migratory flight and examining differences in energy use between individuals to better understand the costs of migration and to test certain predictions of aerodynamic theory about wing design. Testing these predictions will make it possible to refine models of avian flight and may serve to highlight a mechanism by which evolution has shaped the wings of many bird species. Whenever possible, data for individual birds will be obtained during two flights so that effects of variables that do not change between flights such as wing shape can be separated from the effects of variables that do change such as atmospheric conditions and body mass. The data that will be gathered in the course of this work has never been collected before simply because the technology has not been available; it will nicely complement studies of migratory physiology and behavior performed in wind tunnels or on birds captured during migration.