Following up on the successful MLSG symposia at EOU2015 in Badajoz, PAOC2016 in Dakar & EOU2017 in Turku, we are ready for another dose of inspiring community-building preceding EOU2019 in Cluj-Napoca on August 24th-25th. The aim of the MLSG is to promote collaborative research to help advance flyway-scale understanding of and conservation actions for migrant landbirds, especially along the African-Eurasian Flyways. We believe knowledge-sharing is essential to achieve this. Thus, during our symposium we will actively engage all attendants to partake in a dynamic program of presentations, workshops and group discussions.
Program (more details will follow)
Saturday – August 24th
08:45 – 09:00 Arrival and welcome by MLSG
09:00 – 10:20 Keynote lectures session 1:
- Luitzen Santman - The flyway conservation programme of VBN/BirdLife
- Carles Carboneras – Conserving the Turtle Dove across the Flyway
10:20 – 11:00 Coffee
11:00 – 12:40 Keynote lectures session 2:
- Wieland Heim - Bird migration along the Asian flyways
- Sissel Sjöberg - Flight behaviour in individual songbirds throughout the migration
12:40 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 Plenary: Malcolm Burgess – Diagnosing causes of decline through technology, citizen science and old fashioned fieldwork'
14:45 – 17:00 Parallel sessions (with coffee break)
- Workshop 1 Geolocators – maximising data recovery, analyses roadmap and ways to illustrate your data to make the most of it. Led by Martin Briedis & Simon Lisovski, Swiss Ornithological Institute, Sempach
- Workshop 2 Remote Sensing – data availability, ground truthing and new ways to combine it efficiently with your bird data. Led by Alison Beresford RSPB.
- Workshop 3 Non-breeding ecology of migrants in Africa – what we know and what we don’t and how to address this in terms of practical future field studies in Africa. Led by Janne Ouuwehand, University of Groningen
- Species Working Group meetings (as per participant request – an opportunity for any species working groups (e.g. last conference it was whinchats and turtle doves) to convene a meeting. If you plan to convene a Species Working Group meeting on Saturday, please contact the organizing committee at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can reserve a space for you.
17:00 – 18:00 Synopsis from each of the parallel workshop sessions back to the whole conference
18:00 – 20:00 Drinks (venue to be announced)
Sunday – August 25th
09:00 – 10:15 Speed talks 1 (open to all participants, in case we cannot meet demand we will prioritize young researchers and researchers from low-income countries)
10:15 – 11:00 Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 Speed talks 2
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:15 Keynote lectures session 3:
- Sola Iwajomo: Intra-african migration
- Flavio Monti – TBC
15:15 – 15:45 Coffee
15:45 – 16:15 General discussion: Differences across global flyways?
16:15 – 16:45 Group discussions – identifying priorities in landbird research – are there regional differences?
16:45 – 17:15 Group discussions reporting back to the whole conference
17:15 – 17:45 MLSG meeting: state of affairs, future prospects and new ExCo members
Costs and Registration
| Fee | |
| Members, students and participants from low-income countries | 35 EUR |
| Other non-members | 50 EUR |
Price includes participation in the symposium and coffee breaks. There are several restaurants (4-10 EUR/lunch) close to the venue. If you are not an MLSG member yet, you can apply for membership at www.migrantlandbirds.org and profit from the membership rates. Registration, talk submission (we hope that all participants, especially new researchers, will do a speed talk to achieve the networking aims of the MLSG). We are expecting everyone will do a short introduction to their question, species studied and who they are. If you are not happy with giving a talk please indicate on registration. If we have space we will timetable everyone for a speed talk; if not we will prioritise early career researchers and those that have submitted a title. Payment for the symposium will be possible from March 15th 2019 onwards through the EOU registration website:
https://conference.eounion.org/2019/registration/
Accommodation
During registration for the EOU conference you will be able to book accommodation for the MLSG symposium as well. Most important thing is to get to Cluj-Napoca for Friday night August 23rd so you will be there for the weekend pre-conference symposium.
We are looking forward to meeting you in Cluj-Napoca this summer!
Kind regards,
The MLSG ExCo
Wieland Heim, Janne Ouwehand, Ivan Maggini, Carles Carboneras, , Rien van Wijk, Lykke Pedersen, Samuel Temidayo Osinubi, Will Cresswell and Wouter Vansteelant
A PDF of this announcement can be found here