Unravelling the physiological adaptations for avian migration: lessons from integrative approaches.

Migratory birds evolved spectacular adaptations to accommodate their seasonal migratory flights, involving rapid changes in their daily activity patterns and remarkable accumulation and mobilisation of fat stores. The understanding of the mechanisms driving these seasonal shifts in physiological and behavioural states is very important to appropriately identify the potential factors or constraints affecting migratory strategies, including the ability of individuals to migrate as increasing number of studies currently suggest. While it is well recognised that conditions experienced during developmental growth can have dramatic consequences on an individual’s life history and fitness outcomes, our knowledge of these long-lasting organisational effects in migratory birds remain limited. In this talk I will focus on our recent research on the migratory Galliform, the Common quail. Experiments involved the employment of different techniques spanning from brain RNA-Sequencing, multi-tissue measurements of oxidative stress, and circulating concentrations of metabolic hormone. Our data suggested functional links between brain gene expression patterns associated with lipid metabolism and behavioural proxy of the migratory state. Furthermore, I will present more recent experiments where we have been manipulating environmental circumstances during developmental growth by exposing birds to brief episodes of food uncertainty to examine potential long-term effects on physiological processes underlying pre-migratory fattening. We will discuss our data on this model system in a comparative context and in light of most recent work across different bird species.

• Molecular Biology