Anouschka R. hof

Long time ago..

8/12/2017

I have not posted anything in ages on this blog... in the meantime I have been made aware (yet again) of the importance of communicating your findings to whomever is interested so I should perhaps advertise one of my most recent publications.

I recently published a long overdue paper in which I used a spatially explicit landscape simulation model (LANDIS-II) to simulate the effects of different restoration efforts on forest landscapes in Sweden to assess the level of mitigation that is needed to allow viable populations of the locally critically endangered White-backed Woodpecker. Here is the the full text (you can also ask a copy from me)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec.12628/full

And not too long ago I finally saw my first wild white-backed woodpecker in Sweden! I had seem them in captive breeding in Sweden and in Bialowieza primeval forest in Poland, but never in the wild in Sweden. Great I finally saw one, all the way up in Umeå, so it was probably a recent immigrant from Finland. unfortunately I did not have my camera present so there won't be a nice white-backed woodpecker picture accompanying this piece but a boring forest restoration picture.

New website launched

5/2/2016

I launched a new website especially for the black guillemot project. Check out this site http://project-black-guillemot.weebly.com/ to learn all about it!

New research paper published

5/2/2016

Do check out the paper "Paleodistribution modeling suggests glacial refugia in Scandinavia and out-of-Tibet range expansion of the Arctic fox" that I co-authored together with Marcelo Fuentes-Hurtado, as first author, and Roland Jansson. It was published late last year in Ecology and Evolution. In this paper we used ecological niche modeling to identify the climatic niche of the Arctic fox under current environmental conditions, which enabled us to predict the suitable climatic conditions for the species during the last interglacial, the last glacial maximum and the mid-Holocene. We wanted to provide the climatic context to the demise of the Arctic fox in Europe and putative recolonization from the east, and we wanted to explore the bioclimatic connectivity of the Himalayan–Tibetan Plateau with high-latitude circumpolar areas inhabited by the Arctic fox during the last interglacial and the last glacial maximum to evaluate the “Out-of-Tibet” hypothesis.

Were the black guillemots less succesfull this year?

17/8/2015

This year’s fieldwork for the black guillemot project came to an end. Although we have not started with the analyses yet, when comparing this year’s with last year’s ringing totals one may wonder if something is amiss. First of all, even though we were more experienced in discovering nests, we found fewer occupied nests this year, 29 vs. 36 last year. However, this year has been uncommonly wet and a number of spots that were used for nests last year were inundated for part of this season... We were pleased to see though that some of the nest boxes we supplied were occupied.

Second, this year we ringed 24 young, whilst we managed to ring double that amount last year! The question rises whether there were not enough suitable nest sites this year due to some sites being unavailable because of the bad weather. I will request some funding to quantify the availability of nest sites on the islands. Perhaps we need to invest some time and money in creating more artificial nest sites. Furthermore, several young disappeared during this year’s fieldwork. It is unlikely that they have become increasingly good in hiding from us, so a number may have been predated upon since we did not find any remains. Hopefully the cameras placed near the nests may clarify their faith!

ringing common murres and razorbills in the delta

17/7/2015

Yesterday we ringed over 260 common murres and about 60 razorbills in a large colony on an island in the Baltic Sea. It is amazing to see the large numbers of birds on the island. Unfortunately these large colonies are becoming rarer, often do to us... climate change, introduction of invasive alien predators, oil spills, you name it. That is one of the reasons research and monomtoring is needed. We need to know what is happening to seabird colonies in good time so we can at least try and do something about the decrease of species. Luckily the colony we visited seems to be doing just fine, for now...

A common murre contemplating life

New artcle online first

17/7/2015

A while ago an article, The potential effect of climate change on the geographical distribution of insect pest species in the Swedish boreal forest, I co-authored with Anna Svahlin, got accepted in the Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research. It is now published online first. You can find it here.

Three adult black guillemots ringed

18/6/2015

Yesterday we went to the islands again and I am happy to say that there are already several little chicks born although most nests still only contain eggs. We were lucky enough to find three adults which we equipped with a metal ring and a colour ring. Hopefully they will be seen this winter! Unfortunately we found two dead black guillemots, both adults. One seemed to have been crushed by a falling rock, but we could not determine what happened with the other one. We also found two dead lesser black-backed gulls... is there enough food about?

We placed 15 camera traps on the islands so hopefully we get some nice material again this year!

Me ringing a black guillemot (Picture taken by Anna Halmen)

Winning picture

18/6/2015

Perhaps not very special, but I thought it nice anyway that one of my bird pictures (a barnacle goose gosling on the rocks) won a price in a local newspaper! Perhaps I can invest in a good camera now;)

Scrirev reviewing the review process

4/6/2015

I recently came across Scrirev, which is created to review the peer review process of scientific journals. Excellent! I recommend everybody to use it. Although many scientific journals state on their website how long the process takes on average, things always seem to take longer when I send in a paper (with the exception of Plos One, which indeed was very fast). I recently had one relatively good experience with a journal and an extremely bad experience (other than being rejected). It is nice to actually share these experiences with other people that want to publish their research. The website can be found here.

Who is the cuckoo amongst the seabirds?

27/5/2015

The fieldwork season for my black guillemot project started again. Yesterday we went to the island groups to have a look around and try to find some nests. There were already about 40 to 50 birds present but thus far we only found 13 nests. We were pleased to see that two of our nest boxes were occupied! A number of nests only contained 1 egg so far, which likely indicates that the black guillemots are still laying. One nest however contained two guillemot eggs and another, unidentified egg! Our guess is that this egg could be from a goosander or red-breasted merganser, but we do not know yet! Let's see what happens to that one… We will soon go out again to try and find more nests and install our cameras.

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