... immunosuppression, and hence be more vulnerable to infections en route . The red knot Calidris canutus Linnaeus is a long-distance migrant shorebird. We flew red knots the equivalent of 1500 km over 6 days in a wind tunnel. The humoral and cell-mediated immune responses of the flyers were compared to those of non...

... investigated cold acclimation in a migrant shorebird known for extreme physiological flexibility, the red knot ( Calidris canutus , the northerly wintering subspecies islandica ). We measured BMR and M sum over two months in birds caught in the wild and transferred to experimentally controlled conditions...

...Jan A. van Gils; Theunis Piersma; Anne Dekinga; Maurine W. Dietz SUMMARY Aiming to interpret functionally the large variation in gizzard masses of red knots Calidris canutus , we experimentally studied how the digestive processing rate is influenced by the size of the gizzard. During their non...

...Susanne Jenni-Eiermann; Lukas Jenni; Anders Kvist; Åke Lindström; Theunis Piersma; G. Henk Visser SUMMARY This study examines fuel use and metabolism in a group of long-distance migrating birds, red knots Calidris canutus (Scolopacidae), flying under controlled conditions in a wind tunnel for up...

...Anne Dekinga; Maurine W. Dietz; Anita Koolhaas; Theunis Piersma SUMMARY The ability to change organ size reversibly can be advantageous to birds that perform long migrations. During winter, red knots ( Calidris canutus ) feed on shellfish and carry a muscular gizzard that weighs 10% of their body...

...Maurine W. Dietz; Theunis Piersma; Anne Dekinga ABSTRACT Shorebirds such as red knots Calidris canutus routinely make migratory flights of 3000 km or more. Previous studies on this species, based on compositional analyses, suggest extensive pectoral muscle hypertrophy in addition to fat storage...