Speed dating: individual male pectoral sandpipers sample breeding sites across the Arctic

After having journeyed half way across the globe, male Pectoral sandpipers Calidris melanotos visit up to 24 potential breeding sites and flying thousands of kilometers within their breeding range in the Arctic to increase their reproductive success, shows a new study in Nature by Mihai Valcu and Bart Kempenaers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology:

Kempenaers, B. & Valcu, M. (2017) Breeding site sampling across the Arctic by individual males of a polygynous shorebird. Nature, advance online publication, 1-4. doi:10.1038/nature20813.

Learn more there about how Bart Kempenaers and his colleagues have conducted this study in arctic:

In this richly illustrated blog, Bart Kempenaers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology describes the details of the study.- “Behing the paper” from Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Featured photo: Pectoral sandpiper – ©Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Bart Kempenaers