カシラダカのプラネタリウムにおける定位行動

概要

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Most of small migratory birds migrate at night, perhaps to avoid their natural enemies. How do these birds orient themselves? To find out these phenomena, we prepared a bird cage with perches in eight directions, and put each bird in cage in a planetarium which has 2.6m in diameter. For this experiment, we used migratory Rustic Bunting Emberiza rustica which migrate to Siberia in late April. And as a control, resident Meadow Bunting Emberiza cioides was used. A computer kept track of how many times the birds used each perch. The birds at first used all the perches randomly, they began using mainly the north and south perches as the photoperiod was legthened to 13 hours at the time of starting migratory activities. These phenomena continued until 14 hours, but when photoperiod increased at 15 hours, bird used perches randomly again. It therefore appeared that when migratory behavior occurres in migratory birds, a genetically controled orientation is expressed. On the contrary, non-migratory Meadow Bunting did not show any orientation behavior and used all perches randomly through the experiment.
山梨大学の論文