Nestling diet preference of Arctic snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) assessed by DNA-metabarcoding, RiS ID 10909

Birds breeding in the Arctic have to cope with changing and harsh climate conditions during their short breeding season. Adult snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) eat mainly seeds and plant material, but feed their nestlings with insects and other invertebrates. Snow buntings show considerable plasticity in their breeding phenology and their breeding success is most likely mediated by insect abundance variations. An earlier onset of spring and subsequent insect phenology might create a mismatch between the time of maximum food availability and the main snow bunting nestling period. Commonly, mismatches between insectivorous birds and their prey are thought to occur when warmer spring temperatures facilitate faster and earlier development of insects in comparison with avian nestlings. However, without proper knowledge of the preferred nestling diet and the variation in arthropod abundance over the breeding season in Svalbard, no conclusive evaluation of the match-mismatch hypothesis is possible. In this Master project, I will assess snow bunting diet via state-of-the-art DNA metabarcoding of nestling faeces. By isolating DNA from the faeces and utilization of next-gen sequencing, I will both identify what insect species the snow bunting nestlings has been fed, and a relative quantitative distribution of each insect species. The main goal of the project is to identify the preferred nestling diet of snow buntings nestlings in Adventdalen on faeces samples collected during the breeding season 2018.