Dmitry Kishkinev

• PhD in Biology
• Lecturer at Keele University

Displacement experiments have demonstrated that experienced migratory birds translocated thousands of kilometers away from their migratory corridor can orient toward and ultimately reach their intended destinations. This implies that they are capable of ‘‘true navigation,’’ commonly defined as the ability to return to a known destination after disp...

Accelerated biodiversity loss has destabilized functional links within and between ecosystems. Species that cross different ecosystems during migration between breeding and nonbreeding sites are particularly sensitive to global change because they are exposed to various, often ecosystem‐specific, threats. Because these threats have lethal and nonle...

Migratory birds are able to navigate over great distances with remarkable accuracy. The mechanism they use to achieve this feat is thought to involve two distinct steps: locating their position (the ‘map’) and heading towards the direction determined (the ‘compass’). For decades, this map-and-compass concept has shaped our perception of navigation...

Introduction Larval source management, particularly larviciding, is mainly implemented in urban settings to control malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. In Tanzania, the government has recently expanded larviciding to rural settings across the country, but implementation faces multiple challenges, notably inadequate resources and limited know...

Circadian clock properties vary between individuals and relate to variation in entrained timing in captivity. How this variation translates into behavioural differences in natural settings, however, is poorly understood. Here, we tested in great tits whether variation in the free‐running period length (tau) under constant dim light (LL) was linked...

Accelerated biodiversity loss during the Anthropocene has destabilised functional links within and between ecosystems. Migratory species that cross different ecosystems on their repeated journeys between breeding and non-breeding sites are particularly sensitive to global change because they are exposed to various, often ecosystem-specific threats....

For studies on magnetic compass orientation and navigation performance in small bird species, controlled experiments with orientation cages inside an electromagnetic coil system are the most prominent methodological paradigm. These are, however, not applicable when studying larger bird species and/or orientation behaviour during free flight. For th...

Recent research into the navigational strategies of homing pigeons, Columba livia, in the familiar area has highlighted the phenomenon of route fidelity: birds forming idiosyncratic flight paths to which they are loyal over multiple releases from the same site, and even returning to this path when released from a nearby unfamiliar location. Such re...

Displacement experiments have demonstrated that experienced migratory birds translocated thousands of kilometers away from their migratory corridor to unfamiliar areas can orient towards and ultimately reach their intended destinations. This implies that they are capable of “true navigation”, commonly defined as the ability to return to a known goa...

How blood parasite infections influence the migration of hosts remains a lively debated issue as past studies found negative, positive, or no response to infections. This particularly applies to small birds, for which monitoring of detailed migration behavior over a whole annual cycle has been technically unachievable so far. Here, we investigate h...

A number of studies have shown that migrating birds can navigate to their destinations even when displaced to unfamiliar territory. It has been demonstrated that adult Eurasian Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) captured in spring in the Eastern Baltic, displaced 1000 km eastward to the Moscow region and tested in orientation cages, show a cle...

Currently, the deployment of tracking devices is one of the most frequently used approaches to study movement ecology of birds. Recent miniaturization of light‐level geolocators enabled studying small bird species whose migratory patterns were widely unknown. However, geolocators may reduce vital rates in tagged birds and may bias obtained movement...

Insect migrations are spectacular natural events and resemble a remarkable relocation of biomass between two locations in space. Unlike the well-known migrations of daytime flying butterflies, such as the painted lady (Vanessa cardui) or the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), much less widely known are the migrations of nocturnal moths. These mi...

Long-distance avian migrants, e.g. Eurasian reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus), can precisely schedule events of their annual cycle. However, the proximate mechanisms controlling annual cycle and their interplay with environmental factors are poorly understood. We artificially interrupted breeding in reed warblers by bringing them into captivi...

The longitude problem (determining east-west position) is a classical problem in human sea navigation. Prior to the use of GPS satellites, extraordinarily accurate clocks measuring the difference between local time and a fixed reference (e.g., GMT) [1] were needed to determine longitude. Birds do not appear to possess a time-difference clock sense...

The ability to navigate implies that animals have the capability to compensate for geographical displacement and return to their initial goal or target. Although some species are capable of adjusting their direction after displacement, the environmental cues used to achieve this remain elusive. Two possible cues are geomagnetic parameters (magnetic...

Displacement studies have shown that long-distance, night-migrating songbirds are able to perform true navigation from their first spring migration onwards . True navigation requires both a map and a compass. Whereas birds are known to have sun, star, and magnetic compasses, the nature of the map cues used has remained highly controversial. There i...

Displacement studies have clearly shown that experienced avian migrants are able to perform true navigation, i.e., they can find the correct direction leading to a target destination from unfamiliar sites. The sensory mechanisms of true navigation remain poorly understood, though some remarkable progress has been made in the last 10–15 years. There...

At least two independent systems of magnetoreception are currently believed to exist in birds, based on different biophysical principles, located in different parts of their bodies, and with different neuroanatomical mechanisms. One magnetoreceptory system is located in the retina, and may be based on photochemical reactions on the basis of cryptoc...

В настоящее время можно считать доказанным наличие у птиц как минимум двух независимых систем магниторецепции, основанных на разных биофизических принципах, локализованных в разных частях тела и имеющих разную иннервацию. Одна магниторецепторная система локализована в сетчатке глаза и, возможно, основана на фотозависимых бирадикальных химических ре...

The 2013 meeting of the J.B. Johnston Club for Evolutionary Neuroscience and the Karger Workshop in Evolutionary Neuro- science will be held immediately before the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on Thursday, November 7 (the Karger Workshop), and Friday, November 8 (the regular JBJC meeting), 2013. Both meetings will take place at th...

Several studies have shown that experienced night-migratory songbirds can determine their position, but it has remained a mystery which cues and sensory mechanisms they use, in particular, those used to determine longitude (east-west position). One potential solution would be to use a magnetic map or signpost mechanism like the one documented in se...

Birds are thought to possess two magnetosensory systems: (1) a chemical sensor in the bird’s eye, and (2) a magnetoreceptor innervated by the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve (V1) and presumably located in the upper beak. It has been recently demonstrated that the visually mediated magnetosensory system is crucial to the magnetic compass o...

Migratory birds are able to use the sun and associated polarised light patterns, stellar cues and the geomagnetic field for orientation. No general agreement has been reached regarding the hierarchy of orientation cues. Recent data from naturally migrating North American Catharus thrushes suggests that they calibrate geomagnetic information daily f...

Arising from W. Wiltschko et al. 419, 467-470 (2002); Wiltschko et al. replyThe magnetic compass of migratory birds is embedded in the visual system and it has been reported by Wiltschko et al. that European Robins, Erithacus rubecula, cannot show magnetic compass orientation using their left eye only. This has led to the notion that the magnetic c...

Se conoce que algunas aves migratorias pueden navegar—determinar su posición en el globo y su dirección con respecto a su destino lejano—aún sin percibir información emanada por el destino. Una hipótesis, la de la navegación verdaderamente bicoordinada, propone que las aves estarian en capacidad de percibir y emplear una cuadrícula de dos parámetro...

Magnetic compass information has a key role in bird orientation, but the physiological mechanisms enabling birds to sense the Earth's magnetic field remain one of the unresolved mysteries in biology. Two biophysical mechanisms have become established as the most promising magnetodetection candidates. The iron-mineral-based hypothesis suggests that...

During migration, birds must fly over suboptimal habitats differing from those selected during breeding and wintering. Nocturnally migrating passerines need to assess the suitability of potential stopover habitats during landfall. Before actual landfall, distant cues may play a significant role in habitat selection. In this paper, we studied the po...

We studied the effects of weather and the lunar cycle on long-distance nocturnal pre-migratory flights of Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus). Noturnal tape luring was used to capture the birds, and the study was carried out in a habitat atypical of this species on the Courish Spit (southeastern Baltic) between1999 and 2002. A total of 443 juve...

In order to perform true bicoordinate navigation, migratory birds need to be able to determine geographic latitude and longitude. The determination of latitude is relatively easy from either stellar or magnetic cues [1-3], but the determination of longitude seems challenging [4, 5]. It has therefore been suggested that migrating birds are unable to...

Field studies suggest that in autumn, passerine Siberian-African migrants make a detour around Central Asia. We tested whether it results from an innate spatiotemporal programme. We hand-raised juvenile pied flycatchers from Europe and western Siberia in captivity and studied their migratory orientation by testing in Emlen funnels. The birds were k...

The review considers current tendencies in the field of avion orientation and navigation. The numerous facts and theoretical material on the problem obtained for the last 20 years is analyzed. The material is structured into three levels: physiological, compass, and spatial-behavioral. The most prospective and intensely develo-ping trends in the fi...

Migratory orientation of two experimental groups of captive first-year Pied Flycatchers from the Eastern Baltic (Courish Spit, Kaliningrad Region) was studied by testing in Emlen funnels. The birds from the first group were taken into captivity as nestlings, whereas Pied Flycatchers from the second group ringed as nestlings on the Courish Spit, wer...

A response of sylviids, primarily of reed warblers, to the playback of specific songs in some passerines was studied. The birds that stopped flying were mist-nettled at a specially designed field station. The distribution of birds that were captured at night and dawn during the presentation of different acoustic stimuli is discussed. The reed warbl...

The aim of this study was to test whether juvenile dispersal in Reed Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus takes place at night. If this does occur then the questions arise: "in which part of the night, at what age and physiological condition do they disperse?" In 1999 on the Courish Spit on the Baltic we ringed large numbers of Reed Warbler pulli at th...

In the paper it is reviewed the current tendencies in the field of avian orientation and navigation. The numerous facts and theoretical material of the last 20-year researches in this problem are given. The material is structured into the tree levels: physiological, compass and spatiobehavioural ones. In the conclusion most perspective and fast upc...