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Bird Migration Affected by Electronic Interference?
Birders are very aware of the potential effect our electronic gadgets have on birds in the way of playback, but do our pervasive electronic devices effect birds in more subtle ways? A study, recently published in the journal Nature, would suggest so, as the work of researchers from the University of Oldenburg in Germany suggests that European Robins, at least, are disoriented by electromagnetic interference, particularly in urban areas.
photo from wikipedia
The methods were rather ingenious. Co-author Henrik Mouritsen was working on identifying the part of a bird’s brain that processes direction and spatial location. As part of that research European Robins were kept inside wooden huts, a procedure that allows researchers to learn whether birds got orientation information from cues from the stars or rather from cues from the Earth’s magnetic field.
As it turned out, the experimental robins in the city of Oldenburg were unable to orient themselves in the proper direction. In fact, it wasn’t until the researchers covered the huts with aluminum and electronically ground them, which effectively blocked out the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, that the birds were able to put themselves in the right direction.
From an article on Nature News:
The findings imply that the birds’ navigation is controlled by a biological system sensitive to artificial electromagnetic noise, but the biophysical mechanism is unclear. Even so, the work raises the controversial prospect that it might be necessary for humans to stop using the relevant part of the electromagnetic spectrum, says Joseph Kirschvink, a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the author of a commentary accompanying the paper.
Undoubtedly, more work needs to be done (the refrain for so many of these studies with interesting findings), but those researchers studying the effects of electromagnetic interference on navigation on other taxa have seen similar disorientation in newts and mice, among others.
Still, the question of whether birds rely on the magnetic field for navigation wholly or in part with visual stimuli, and whether that percentage differs among different species or families, remains to be worked out. But with the seemingly unending parade of, admittedly very cool, electronic doo-dads, this seems to be something worth exploring.
Source: http://blog.aba.org/2014/05/bird-migration-affected-by-electronic-interference.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bird-migration-affected-by-electronic-interference
