
Diets on the flyway
"Diets on the Flyway" is a pioneering research initiative led by EUFLYNET members, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project aims to analyze the dietary habits of migratory birds across their non-breeding grounds in Africa, focusing on how these birds adapt to changing environmental conditions. Through comprehensive field studies and advanced diet metabarcoding techniques, the project seeks to understand the nutritional challenges migratory birds face and to inform conservation strategies that help safeguard their future.
The project Diets on the Flyway, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and led by EUFLYNET members based at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, is kicking-off in January 2025. The aim of the project is to understand food resource use by migratory birds in their non-breeding grounds. The data collected for this project will shed light on potential vulnerabilities of migratory bird populations, for instance their reliance on scarce or highly seasonal food resources that may become unavailable with climate and habitat changes. Every year, more than two billion landbirds travel from their breeding grounds in Europe to non-breeding grounds in Africa. This mass migration involves some of the bird species that are declining most rapidly in Europe. However, the causes for these declines are poorly understood. One central issue is that until recently, almost all our information on migratory birds has come from their breeding grounds, with many aspects of their non-breeding ecology still poorly known. Fundamental aspects such as habitat preference, moulting sites, seasonal movements and diet are rarely investigated on flyways outside Europe and in Africa. Diets on the Flyway will contribute to this knowledge gap by broadly surveying food availability and diet of migratory birds in Africa. Diets on the Flyway brings together a network of EUFLYNET researchers and African collaborators conducting fieldwork across the non-breeding ground of migratory birds. At these research sites, faecal samples will be collected by local teams, and then shipped to Switzerland for diet metabarcoding analysis. Diet metabarcoding reveals food items consumed by birds by extracting prey DNA from faecal matter. In addition, local experts at each site will survey insect and plant food availability. With the data collected for Diets on the Flyway, we will be able to address essential questions such as what are the resources selected by migratory birds prior to migration, whether there is overlap between migratory species’ diets, or with cohabiting resident species, and where are the potential nutritional bottlenecks faced by migratory birds.