Mapping threats to arctic bird populations. The effect of infectious organisms and pollution on bird health. IPY #172 BirdHealth

• Main Authors: Ivar Folstad, Staffan Bensch, Dennis Hasselquist, Ron A M Fouchier, Olga Dolnik, Kjetil Aasbakk, Kirill Galaktionov, Alexey Konoplev
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic birds; Climate change; IPY; Somateria mollissima
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.537.7848; http://www.birdhealth.nl/proposalnorway.pdf

Project summary The arctic environment and its unique wildlife are currently being threatened at several levels; from climate change, from pollution and from infectious diseases. Health (infection levels and immune responsiveness) in wildlife is regulating population numbers through individual survival and reproduction. Little is known about the combined impact of infectious organisms and pollution on the health of arctic organisms. Due to the short arctic summer and limited food resources arctic birds typically have an exhausting breeding season were they rely upon accumulated body reserves for breeding. This leaves arctic animals very vulnerable to environmental stressors during breeding. This study proposes to (i) experimentally test how infectious organisms and (ii) how exposure from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – both legacy and new compounds and selected heavy metals (HMs), affect the health, reproduction and survival of breeding female common eiders Somateria mollissima. Moreover, (iii) by comparing health and infectious organisms of eider populations from three areas differing in migration patterns (wintering and breeding areas) we will assess the potential large scale effects of avian migration and climatic zones for distribution of infectious organisms. Also, (iv) waterfowl is considered the main source of avian influenza (AI) viruses, and may thus constitute a possible source for infection with bird flu to humans. We will thus identify previous exposure to