I geolocalizzatori per lo studio delle migrazioni negli uccelli: uno studio pionieristico su vasta scala della migrazione della Rondine (Hirundo rustica)

Conservation of migratory birds flying across continents requires accurate understanding of important stopover and wintering areas. Here we plan to use the latest technological advances in long-distance tracking of animal movements to perform a large-scale study of the migration of barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) between Europe and Africa. We will apply tiny (0.5 g) geolocator tags to 200 barn swallows of a declining population breeding in northern Italy, which should lead to information on migration trajectories of 80 individuals one year later. Besides providing accurate information on migratory routes and wintering areas, we expect that the results will significantly broaden our understanding of migration ecology and conservation issues. We emphasize that this highly novel study would represent the first individual-based large-scale investigation of the migratory behaviour of small migratory birds, thus contributing to fill significant gaps of knowledge about migratory movements