Bewick’s swans are migrating less and less far to the southwest in winter. On average, they spend the winter 118 kilometres closer to their breeding grounds for every 1 degree Celsius increase in winter temperature. In his PhD research, Hans Linssen of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) shows that this adaptation is the result of two processes. First, the birds are responding to the temperature: when it is warm in the fall, they do not migrate as far. Second, young birds are less likely than their parents to return to where they spent a previous winter, instead remaining further northeast.

NIOO scientist Paul Bodelier has been appointed as professor of Functional Microbial Ecology at the Faculty of Sciences in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.