Project member Georgette Lagendijk (University of Groningen) and eleven contributors, of which many are also associated with the LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitats project, have published a new study on the diet of meadow birds. Specifically, the study examined which arthropods (such as insects and spiders), but also slugs or snails the chicks of Black-tailed Godwits and Northern Lapwings eat most often.
It is known that the diet of meadow bird chicks relies mostly on insects. The past and ongoing global insect decline may therefore also be a reason for the declines in European meadow bird species. That means for meadow-bird conservation it is imperative to know which groups of arthropods – and other animals – conservation efforts need to focus on.
In this new study, the authors published a list of the arthropod and slug/snail groups that were found in the faeces of Godwit and Lapwing chicks. They found 366 different species in the faeces of Godwit chicks and 313 species in the faeces of Lapwing chicks. The most important food sources for both species were flies and mosquitoes as well as beetles.
In the coming years, the team will continue to collect diet data and extend their analysis to compare different years and different (agricultural) management conditions.
The study was published in “Wader Study”, Volume 132, Issue 1, and is now also available online here: https://doi.org/10.18194/ws.00368
