Migratory birds are known to use a number of different orientation cues to determine and maintain the direction of their movements. They are able to use at least three different sources of compass information, includi...Migratory birds are known to use a number of different orientation cues to determine and maintain the direction of their movements. They are able to use at least three different sources of compass information, including solar, stellar and geomagnetic cues. However, little is known about how these cues are calibrated into uniform reference direction information, while the hierarchy of these cues remains controversial. In recent studies, researchers suggest that avian migrants calibrate their geomagnetic compass on sunset cues, whereas others fail to find such patterns and insist on the prevalence of the magnetic compass. We carefully reviewed the existing literature and suggest that the conflicting results reported by different authors are due to genuine variation among species and propose hypotheses to explain this variation.展开更多
基金supported by grant 12-04-00296-a from the Russian Foundation for Basic ResearchX.L. was supported by grant 60905060 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China+3 种基金grant BS2010DX025 from the Scientific Research Foundation for Excellent Middle-Aged and Youth Scientists of Shandong Province of Chinagrant 2011B11114 from the Fundamental Research Funds for Central UniversitiesThe writing of this review was inspired by the Bilateral Sino-Russian symposium ‘Animal Magnetic Navigation’ supported by grant 11-04-91216-NSFC-z from the Russian Foundation for Basic Researchgrant 61010164 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China
文摘Migratory birds are known to use a number of different orientation cues to determine and maintain the direction of their movements. They are able to use at least three different sources of compass information, including solar, stellar and geomagnetic cues. However, little is known about how these cues are calibrated into uniform reference direction information, while the hierarchy of these cues remains controversial. In recent studies, researchers suggest that avian migrants calibrate their geomagnetic compass on sunset cues, whereas others fail to find such patterns and insist on the prevalence of the magnetic compass. We carefully reviewed the existing literature and suggest that the conflicting results reported by different authors are due to genuine variation among species and propose hypotheses to explain this variation.
