Breeding and molting are annual life cycle events in birds and understanding their biology is crucial; conducting life history studies is a significant step toward achieving this goal. In temperate and arctic regions, these events are mutually exclusive, occurring at different periods of the year, and often with defined seasons; each of these events dictates the timing of the other. In the equatorial tropics, however, birds breed and molt year-round, with these physiological activities often overlapping; some year-round breeders breed independent of rain, temperature, and food resources. They also exhibit lower reproductive rates and metabolic rates, but higher survival rates compared to those found in temperate regions. Unlike the relatively good understanding in the temperate and arctic regions, studies seeking to understand the breeding and molt biology of equatorial tropical birds have hardly been.



Our primary objective is to deepen our comprehension of how grassland birds adapt to tropical climates during the breeding and molting seasons. We'll accomplish this by studying long-term data collected from three distinct climate regions. This data will help us understand how birds react to factors such as food availability, rainfall, and temperature during both breeding and non-breeding periods.

In this session, we will focus on comprehending the annual breeding and molting cycle of the Rufous-naped Lark. We'll examine breeding and molting data gathered from Kenya between 2011 and 2014. Our goal is to create visual graphs that illustrate the correlation between breeding and molting. This way, we hope to gain insight into the relationship between environmental variables, invertebrate availability, and breeding and molting patterns.