Tracking gulls to prevent a bird flu pandemic

“In this photo, I’m monitoring gulls near Sandgerði, a small fishing village in southwest Iceland. This area is a volcanic peninsula, and although there’s a lot of precipitation, most of the water passes through the rocks and flows underground to the sea. So the places where fresh water is available, such as the lake in Sandgerði, attract a lot of birds.

Our project is to screen for strains of avian influenza (bird flu) to study how they spread. We focus on certain species of gull with migration paths that overlap here.

Lesser black-backed gulls (Larus fuscus) breed in Iceland during the summertime, and in the winter they migrate to Europe or West Africa. By contrast, the Iceland gull (Larus glaucoides) breeds farther north, in Greenland or Canada, but returns to Iceland for winter. Then there are the local ones, such as the great black-backed gull (Larus marinus) and the glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus), that are here all year round.

All of that mixing means that Iceland is a key location for avian influenza viruses from Europe to move into North America, and vice versa.

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Nature 639, 268 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00623-0

This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Miles Lizak