An enormous success! The Neuron Expedition helped a study in the journal Science

The biologist Vojtěch Kubelka, a participant in the 2017 Neuron Expedition, is publishing in one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals — Science. His study recorded an enormous success as one of the first to show the influence of climate change on the global relationships between species. The article specifically deals with the relationship between waders and global climate change: the authors studied how far the eggs in waders' nests fall prey to predators. It turned out that the localities with the most marked global warming and a higher degree of climatic instability showed the highest rate of plundering of waders' nests. It was precisely the research into endangered waders by Vojtěch Kubelka's team that the Neuron Endowment Fund supported last year within the Neuron Expedition project with CZK 139,000.

"Although the data gathered during our expedition could not be directly part of the study now published in Science, while working in the rainforest on the Andean slopes I clarified and realised a number of regularities about how tropical ecosystems function, which significantly helped me in the final completion of our publication," says Vojtěch Kubelka.

The Neuron Expedition of Vojtěch Kubelka's team took place from November to December 2017. Its aim was to rediscover and map a rare wader species — the imperial snipe (Gallinago imperialis), which was assumed to nest in southern Peru. Kubelka's team managed to track the snipe down and, in addition, to map in detail other endangered waders occurring in the region. The data gathered then significantly contributed to further planned research into and protection of waders in these little-explored parts of the world.

"We are hugely pleased that the scientists we have honoured are managing to reach the highest scientific goals — and publication in prestigious scientific journals is undoubtedly among them! It testifies to the high quality of our laureates, whose work reaches far beyond the borders of this country. Besides Mr Kubelka's expedition, in the eight years of the fund's existence we have supported six other such expeditions to a total value of CZK 2,876,100. With the Neuron Expedition project we intend to go on enabling scientists to do research beyond the borders of our country and so to broaden the horizons of our public," says Monika Vondráková, one of the founders of the Neuron Endowment Fund.