Elham Nourani

Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior · Department of Migration

Soaring flight developed as a result of behavioural and morphological adaptations that allow birds to reduce the metabolic cost of flight by harnessing the energy available in the atmosphere. Despite an increased attention given in the last decades to the physics and ecology that allow soaring flight, its study has been limited by the generally low...

The heterogeneity of the physical environment determines the cost of transport for animals, shaping their energy landscape. Animals respond to this energy landscape by adjusting their distribution and movement to maximize gains and reduce costs. Much of our knowledge about energy landscape dynamics focuses on factors external to the animal, particu...

The heterogeneity of the physical environment determines the cost of transport for animals, shaping their energy landscape. Animals respond to this energy landscape by adjusting their distribution and movement to maximize gains and reduce movement costs. Much of our current knowledge about energy landscape dynamics focuses on factors external to th...

The heterogeneity of the physical environment determines the cost of transport for animals, shaping their energy landscape. Animals respond to this energy landscape by adjusting their distribution and movement to maximize gains and reduce movement costs. Much of our current knowledge about energy landscape dynamics focuses on factors external to th...

The heterogeneity of the physical environment determines the cost of transport for animals, shaping their energy landscape. Animals respond to this energy landscape by adjusting their distribution and movement to maximize gains and reduce movement costs. Much of our current knowledge about energy landscape dynamics focuses on factors external to th...

Migration can be an energetically costly behavior with strong fitness consequences in terms of mortality and reproduction. Migrants should select migratory routes to minimize their costs, but both costs and benefits may change with experience. This raises the question of whether experience changes how individuals select their migratory routes. Here...

How animals refine migratory behavior over their lifetime (i.e., the ontogeny of migration) is an enduring question with important implications for predicting the adaptive capacity of migrants in a changing world. Yet, our inability to monitor the movements of individuals from early life onward has limited our understanding of the ontogeny of migra...

Migration can be an energetically costly behavior with strong fitness consequences in terms of mortality and reproduction. The fact that costs and benefits may change with age and experience raises the question of whether experience changes the criteria that individuals use to select their migratory routes. Here we investigate the effect of age on...

The heterogeneity of the physical environment determines the cost of transport for animals, shaping their energy landscape. Animals respond to this energy landscape by adjusting their distribution and movement to maximize gains and reduce movement costs. Much of our current knowledge about energy landscape dynamics focuses on factors external to th...

Storms can cause widespread seabird stranding and wrecking,1,2,3,4,5 yet little is known about the maximum wind speeds that birds are able to tolerate or the conditions they avoid. We analyzed >300,000 h of tracking data from 18 seabird species, including flapping and soaring fliers, to assess how flight morphology affects wind selectivity, both at...

Область гнездования глухой кукушки (Cuculus optatus) охватывает большую часть таёжной зоны Евразии, включая самую северную границу бореальных лесов. Пути миграции и районы зимовок кукушек разных популяций этого вида изучены крайне слабо, что связано как со скрытностью птиц вне сезона размножения, так и с внешним сходством с представителями близких...

Migration is a complex behaviour that is costly in terms of time, energy and risk of mortality. Thermal soaring birds rely on airflow, specifically wind support and uplift, to offset their energetic costs of flight. Their migratory routes are a record of movement decisions to negotiate the atmospheric environment and achieve efficiency. We expected...

Bird migrations are impressive behavioral phenomena, representing complex spatiotemporal strategies to balance costs of living while maximizing fitness. The field of bird migration research has made great strides over the past decades, yet fundamental gaps remain. Technologies have sparked a transformation in the study of bird migration research by...

Flying seabirds are adapted for windy environments 1,2 . Despite this, storms can cause widespread strandings and wrecks, demonstrating that these seabirds are not always able to avoid or compensate for extreme conditions 3,4,5,6,7 . The maximum wind speeds that birds can operate in should vary with morphology and flight style ⁸ , but this has been...

English is widely recognized as the language of science, and English‐language publications (ELPs) are rapidly increasing. It is often assumed that the number of non‐ELPs is decreasing. This assumption contributes to the underuse of non‐ELPs in conservation science, practice, and policy, especially at the international level. However, the number of...

Understanding how animals develop their ability to perform complex behaviors is fundamental to understanding their fitness and plasticity under global change. Migration can be a costly behavior in terms of time, energy, and mortality, and minimizing these costs is key to survival and reproduction. Thermal soaring birds rely on airflow to offset the...

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent...

Flying over the open sea is energetically costly for terrestrial birds. Despite this, over-water journeys of many birds, sometimes hundreds of kilometres long, are uncovered by bio-logging technology. To understand how these birds afford their flights over the open sea, we investigated the role of atmospheric conditions, specifically wind and uplif...

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent...

The open sea is considered an ecological barrier to terrestrial bird movement. However, over-water journeys of many terrestrial birds, sometimes hundreds of kilometers long, are being uncovered by bio-logging technology. To understand how these birds afford their flights over the open sea, we investigated the role of atmospheric conditions in subsi...

Thermal soaring birds extract energy from the atmosphere to achieve energetically low-cost movement. When encountering regions that are energetically costly to fly over, such as open seas, they should attempt to adjust the spatio-temporal pattern of their passage to maximize energy extraction from the atmosphere over these ecological barriers. We a...

Background: Soaring birds extract energy from the atmosphere to achieve energetically low-cost movement. Species that fly over ecological barriers, such as open seas, need to adjust the spatio-temporal patterns of their passage to extract the highest possible energy from the atmosphere over the barrier. We introduce the concept of “energy seascapes...

Flapping flight is relatively costly for soaring birds such as raptors. To avoid costly flight, migrating raptors generally avoid flying over water. As a result, all but one of the global raptor migration flyways are largely over land. The East Asian oceanic flyway for raptors is the exception. Raptor species using this flyway migrate by island-hop...

Divergent evolution between Western Rock Nuthatch Sitta neumayer and Eastern Rock Nuthatch S. tephronota is widely recognised as the original case study of character displacement. However, in their contact zone in the Zagros Mountains, Iran, the morphological differences important for niche segregation between the two species remain unknown. We inv...

We carried out an avifaunal survey of Sabzevar county, Khorasan-Razavi province, northeast Iran over seven years, March 2008–February 2014. We identified 143 bird species. Eight had not previously been observed in the county and three were new for northeast Iran. Our investigations of the Rud-i Jowin/Rud-i Kalshur IBA of Sabzevar county suggest tha...

We developed a habitat suitability model for wintering populations of the Asian Houbara Bustard Chlamydotis macqueenii in Iran and determined environmental variables affecting its occurrence. Our results indicate that various patches in central, western and eastern Iran provide the most suitable habitats for the Houbara. Annual precipitation, slope...

Migratory birds can be adversely affected by climate change as they encounter its geographically uneven impacts in various stages of their life cycle. While a wealth of research is devoted to the impacts of climate change on distribution range and phenology of migratory birds, the indirect effects of climate change on optimal migratory routes and f...

Atmospheric currents influence the choice of migratory routes and flight characteristics of birds as well as their decisions regarding migration onset and stopovers. Among long distance avian migrants, soaring birds are particularly dependent on wind and updrafts to help them complete their journeys. This review focuses on the behavioral adaptation...

This paper introduces user-friendly atmospheric data, so-called objective analysis data, for ornithological studies. The data have been interpolated onto grid points distributed at a regular interval in space and time, and are suitable for analyzing using computer data analysis software. Data assimilation techniques, which are basically the applica...

Latifi’s Viper (Montivipera latifii), an endemic viper in the Alborz mountain chains in Iran, is facing serious threats within its last stronghold, the Lar National Park. The little information available on the distribution, population dynamics, and ecology of this scarce species, as well as its major threats, has hampered effective conservation pl...

Classifying the status of threatened species using tools such as the IUCN Red List is a critical step for identifying at-risk species, and for conservation planning at global and sub-global levels. The requirement for data on population trends, geographic ranges and population sizes has proved challenging to carry out at the national level, especia...

Migratory raptors rarely fly over stretches of water larger than 25 km, although different species undertake water crossings of varying lengths, depending mainly on their wing morphology. Oriental Honey-buzzards fly c. 680 km over the East China Sea in autumn from breeding areas in Japan to wintering areas in Southeast Asia, but avoid this long wat...

We determined the effects of past and future climate changes on the distribution of the Montivipera raddei species complex (MRC) that contains rare and endangered viper species limited to Iran, Turkey and Armenia. We also investigated the current distribution of MRC to locate unidentified isolated populations as well as to evaluate the effectivenes...

Latifi’s Viper (Montivipera latifii), an endemic viper in the Alborz mountain chains in Iran, is facing serious threats within its last stronghold, the Lar National Park. The little information available on the distribution, population dynamics, and ecology of this scarce species, as well as its major threats, has hampered effective conservation pl...

The network of wetland systems in Iran provides valuable staging and wintering areas for Waterfowl (Anatidae; ducks, geese and swans) in the African-Western Eurasian flyways. Limited data on the status and threats facing this group of birds in Iran has hampered conservation activities for decades. In this study, we determined population trends for...

Migration of birds involves long hours of flight interspersed with time spent at stopover sites. Identification and conservation of stopover sites is crucial for the conservation of migratory bird populations. We set out to investigate the passage migrant avifauna of Sarakhs county, northeastern Iran, to determine the importance of this region for...

Sarakhs is one of the most biologically diverse regions in Iran, encompassing an elevational span of 250-2500m, and 5472 km2 and high habitat diversity. Sarakhs also is geographically isolated form central Iran by Hezar Masjed and Mazdoran Mountain in south. A Sarakhs region is contact zone between West and east Palaearctic avifauna. During More th...

Melanism is not considered a typical characteristic in wolves of Iran and dark wolves are believed to have originated from crossbreeding with dogs. Such hybrid individuals can be identified with the combined use of genetic and morphological markers. We analyzed two black wolves using a 544 base pairs (bp) fragment of the mtDNA control region and 15...

The network of wetland systems in Iran provides valuable staging and wintering areas for waterbirds in the African-Western Eurasian flyways. The West Siberian/Caspian/Nile populations of Anatidae (ducks, geese and swans) regularly overwinter and stop over in Iran, and are considered an economically and culturally important group of birds in the c...

Predictive models of species denning habitat are useful for understanding distribution of core use areas and identifying areas with potential conflicts. Wolf den site selection in unmanaged areas with dominance of agriculture-lands and human disturbance is not completely understood. We used a GIS multivariate model based on the Mahalanobis distance...

A 2-year study of the food habits of the Persian leopard was conducted in Sarigol National Park in northeastern Iran, North Khorasan Province. Based on an analysis of 52 leopard scats, the principal prey was wild sheep (Ovis orientalis: prey frequency of occurrence = 61.5%; prey relative frequency of occurrence = 47.05%; relative biomass = 53.96%),...

The Gray Wolf is a wide ranging carnivore in Iran, absent only in the central deserts and Dasht-e Lut. This study was carried out to verify whether, despite their high mobility, individual wolves belonging to different populations show morphological variations in the skull. We collected 48 skulls from various regions of Iran and measured 24 variabl...

Jajroud Protected Area Complex is one of the main habitats of Alborz Red Sheep (Ovis gmelini × O. vignei) in Iran. Being close to Tehran, this habitat has been reduced and fragmented due to the human constructions. This study was designed with the aim of identifying the summer and fall habitat patches and the suitability of the matrix by means of E...