Ko de Korte (79) and Kees Schreven (31) are both biologists with a passion for birds. De Korte still refers to ‘my skuas’ when he talks about the research he conducted in the Arctic around half a century ago. Schreven, a PhD candidate, is mainly interested in large birds of prey and the pink-footed goose. As the two of them reflect on their field of study, they wonder: how have things changed in the past fifty years?
Biologiat Ko de Korte and PhD researcher Kees Schreven
Text: Belinda van der Gaag en Emma van der Deijl, photo: Sander van den Bosch
For De Korte, being a scientist circa fifty years ago meant spending months away from home, studying the breeding biology of birds in an uninhabited part of North-East Greenland. Today, he’s satisfied with the legacy of all those years of research. ‘You might wonder if it’s really worth spending all that time sitting out on the tundra. But we did learn some pretty revolutionary things about the Arctic skua, and about how important the efficient use of their energy is to them. When they arrive in the polar region in the spring, they’re at their very fittest, because that’s the only way they can reproduce.’
Pectoral muscles
De Korte’s work was very hands-on: he would shoot birds outside of the research zone and literally get as much out of them as he could. ‘You end up with such a wealth of information by doing that: about stomach contents, size, gender characteristics and whether they’re sexually mature.’ And nothing went to waste. Dozens of these birds are still kept in storage at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, so that they can be used for ongoing research. ‘I ate all the pectoral muscles from the skuas we collected. It would’ve been a waste to throw them away. They’re quite tasty.’
Ko and Kees at Naturalis
Collecting droppings
For Schreven, these are fascinating stories and he admits to a twinge of jealousy. ‘Because of that slow pace, and living in a world without immediate gratification. Nowadays, there’s so much information available online and in the literature. Which is great, but it’s also difficult to keep up with it all. Yet, if you did it the old-fashioned way now, you’d fall behind.’ Technological innovations have transformed their field of study, meaning there’s less room now for the ‘old’ kind of fieldwork. Schreven, a doctoral candidate at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO), is researching how climate change has altered the migratory routes and dietary habits of the pink-footed goose. This past summer, he was on Spitsbergen, collecting droppings from the species to analyse later. But these days, an expedition like that is more the exception than the rule.
Specific samples
‘When we conduct fieldwork now, our main objective is to attach GPS trackers so that we can follow the birds from home’, says Schreven. ‘If we want to study the anatomy of the birds, we collect some very specific samples. We extract a few feathers, take blood or do a swab with a cotton bud. Or we collect environmental DNA, known as e-DNA, which is a sample of the bird’s environment. We would do this if we’ve caught birds in the breeding area and want to work out what they’ve eaten, for example.’ Things were pretty different for De Korte. ‘I got to know all my breeding pairs’, he explains. ‘They all had their own personality, with different characters. If we wanted to track birds, we did it by ringing them with individual colours, or by using colour marking. Then again, you just had to hope that the birds would come back. You never knew if they would.’
You just had to hope that the birds would come back. You never knew if they would.
The advantage of modern technology is the sheer quantity of information it generates, providing detailed data even from places that would otherwise be inaccessible. ‘We can now see what the birds are up to during their journey or overnight, when they’re flying from Norway to Spitsbergen, for example’, says Schreven. ‘They always set off when there’s a fair wind, but now we know that if they encounter headwinds on the way, they’ll sometimes rest on the ocean surface to save energy and drift with the currents.’
Living in a tent
The options available to scientists today are exciting, remarks De Korte. ‘This would have been the stuff of dreams to me.’ On the other hand, he thinks young researchers today can be a little spoiled. ‘They want a wage, travel costs and funding for their research. It was different in our day: you had a passion and you pursued it. We lived in a tent or a hut and were away for a long time. Personal lives took a back seat. I never imagined it would enable me to earn a living; I was just thrilled to be able to do it. I felt privileged, and that was my reward. When it came to securing resources, somehow you’d find people to help you, either formally or informally. NWO, then still the ZWO, couldn’t give me any funding even though they were supportive of the research. They did buy me a canoe, which I had to return afterwards.’
Out in the open air
Even now, you’re unlikely to get funding for lengthy expeditions, according to Schreven. He once spent a couple of months in Russia, independently researching the migration of barnacle geese, the Arctic skua and the red-necked phalarope in his spare time. ‘I see that as a hobby. But there’s been a shift in the skills required of a biologist. Field experience is rarely expected anymore, because it’s not as necessary as it used to be. These days, you need to be good at processing data, so you need to have some understanding of programming, working with big data and performing statistical calculations. Even when I was a student, only ten or twenty percent of my fellow students were real birdwatchers, or always outdoors, studying animals and nature.’
A real understanding of biology
And yet, that’s exactly what Schreven settles upon when asked about his vision of the future for this field of study. ‘I hope we’ll always continue to recognise the value of fieldwork. For me, it will always be the foundation of what we do. It’s great to see how Ko inspires young researchers with his experiences on Spitsbergen and in Greenland. There’s a lot you can do using new methods, but you still have to do a lot of interpretation too. If you want to really understand biology, you have to get out there.’
If you want to really understand biology, you have to get out there
De Korte agrees, adding: ‘I’d also like us to bear in mind the history of life, and see biology as a historical science. At the moment, we’re too static, just looking at the here and now, which makes us scared of change. However, there’s nothing wrong with change. Everything used to be different, and things will be different tomorrow too. I’d like researchers to have a wider perspective and to do more research driven by their own curiosity.’
Conceptual thinking
Schreven, too, feels that research today is too one-dimensional. ‘If you want to flag urgent issues, you need some basic long-term studies too, except that’s exactly where it’s difficult to get funding. We think in much more conceptual ways now than we used to. So if, say, “breeding biology” is the topic, then the specific species in which you’re studying breeding behaviour will be a subset of that topic, instead of being studied in their own right. I think the urge to make an immediate impact is in part what’s driving that trend. We now need to be able to make generalisations based on our research, so that we can demonstrate its usefulness. Meanwhile, we’re not really doing exhaustive research into a particular species. If that’s to be our approach as biologists, how will we really get to know our species anymore? I think we need to keep working in the field. We can’t just rely on programmers.’
