Dear All
I appeal to you in a request to get some information about nesting
colonies of the Great White Pelican in Kenya and East Africa. I know that the largest colony in Kenya was at Lake Elementeita but now the pelican nesting
island is flooded, and only few birds visit. Does any of you know about other nesting colonies in Kenya?
Or in East Africa?
Way Am I asking?!
I am a M.Sc. student in the Hebrew university of Jerusalem.
We what to study the population genetic
structure of the Great White Pelicans. This is part of a very large
conservation and monitoring project. Thus, we conduct wide range of
studies in order to understand the phenomena we experience in Israel of
extremely hungry (& very poor body condition) migratory Great White Pelican
(GWP), populations, migration, dispersion, who are the wintering GWP in Israel
and those that stay over the summer in East Africa.
Also, the numbers of fall
migrants GWP over Israel varies significantly between years. Is it relates to
different migrating populations or some stay in Africa (as we experienced last
year).
Within the project
we intend to examine patterns of genetic differentiation across the range
of distribution of the GWP.
Eventually we will try to answer
questions, such as:
1.
whether individuals of African origin breed with those of Western Palearctic
origin.
2. what
are the genetic differences between migratory populations and non-migratory.
As a first step we are interested
in collecting feather samples of GWP nesting colonies from as much
colonies as possible across Africa, Asia and Europe.
If any of you can help us, or if
you have contacts that might be able, please contact me.
Thank you
Liran Ben Altabet