Episode 47: The complex web of factors that influence bird migration with Yaara Aharon-Rotman

Where she talks about how multiple nations and habitats need to cooperate to help these champion migrants. In this episode, Dr. Yaara Aharon-Rotman speaks about long distance migration, mainly among shorebirds but also passerines.  We have explored migratory shorebirds before in Episode 43.  Here, Dr. Rotman talks about how national borders don’t apply to migrating birds and how we all need to cooperate to help them along.  Originally from Israel, Yaara has completed her PhD in Deakin University, Australia where she studied long distance migratory shorebirds. Inspired by the long migration of her studied species, she than joined research labs in Israel (to work on migratory passerines), China (where she worked on a vulnerable Asian habitat for migratory geese) and Australia, her current home where she study torpor in local and migratory species as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New England. Her main interest focuses on how animals, mainly migratory species, respond to challenges, and specifically, their physiological adaptation to global changes. If she is not looking for birds in the field or analysing data in her office, you can find her in one of the National Parks around Armidale with her family, or at the boxing ring!