AbstractLittle is known on the migration routes of songbirds breeding in Siberia. We used satellite transmitters to study the migration of two White´s Thrushes Zoothera aurea captured during breeding season in the Ural Mountains, Russia. One of the devices transmitted during spring and the breeding season (May to September) in the following year from the Khangai Mountains of central Mongolia, 3000 km southeast of its former breeding season site. Based on the combination of lack of accurate locations, potentially unsuitable habitat, unusual behaviour, and unusual location outside of the known breeding range we consider it most likely that the bird died there during migration, while the transmitter continued to function. No data on migration routes or non-breeding areas were received, although the movement to Mongolia suggest a migration route east of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

Understanding whether land use intensification causes regime shifts is of key importance for management, particularly if these shifts are associated with thresholds separating different ecosystem states and with hysteretic dynamics. Here we use a unique, long-term grassland database to identify thresholds in the response of 16 ecosystem functions and the diversities of 21 taxa to land use intensity. We show that aboveground diversity (5 of 10 taxa), shoot biomass and soil N retention showed threshold responses to land use intensity, i.e., abrupt changes between extensively and intensively managed grasslands. Time-series analysis revealed that ecosystem functions showed hysteresis around the threshold, while diversity did not. Shifting back to the functioning seen in extensively managed grasslands may therefore require larger reductions in land use intensity than shifting to the high intensity state. Identifying such thresholds along land use gradients is critical to prevent ecosystem degradation and conserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions.