Meeting Abstract

S6.5  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Endogenous migration programs and orientation in passerine birds ÅKESSON, S; University of Lund, Lund susanne.akesson@zooekol.lu.se

The solo-migrations by young songbirds are known to be controlled by an endogenous program inherited from their parents. In this program the migratory direction, distance and physiological changes to meet the migration flights are encoded, as well as decisions when to depart for migration flights and when to end the migration. I will talk about interactions between the endogenous migration programs and external information, for instance the geomagnetic field, during migration in passerine birds. How does the inherited migration program interact with external information both during natural long-distance displacements as well as in simulated laboratory situations? What can we learn from such experiments? The functional characteristics of the migration program and how it interacts with external information will have a resulting effect on the output, the physiology and compass orientation of the bird in a given situation. We might expect differences between age groups, which will be discussed.