In the migratory behaviour of the Barnacle Goose Branta leucopsis several changes have occurred over the past few decades. Barnacle geese breeding in Russia have delayed the commencement of spring migration with approximately one month since the 1980s, new populations have emerged in former stopover areas in the Baltic Sea region, and a non-migratory population has emerged in the wintering area in The Netherlands. This thesis aims to understand these changes. First, I studied the delay in commencement of spring migration. In the 1970s and 1980s, barnacle geese commenced spring migration half April, whereas spring migration now commences half May. I used a dynamic programming model to test three different possible explanations of delay in migration: 1) Climate change, because geese follow a green wave of fresh plant growth during spring migration, and are thus expected to be sensitive to increasing spring temperatures. 2) Competition for food during stopover because the population migrating to Russia has rapidly increased during the period in which the migration change occurred. 3) Predation danger during stopover because the number of avian predators such as White-tailed Eagles has drastically increased in the Baltic stopover area. The model showed that a delay of one month is adaptive in both the case of competition and predation danger. Strikingly, predation danger has received very little attention so far in goose studies. Migration strategy in geese is not genetically but culturally inherited, especially from parents to offspring via an extended period of parental care. Because this thesis focused on understanding migratory change, I focused on the parental care behaviour and the parent-offspring association because a change in migration was expected to be preceded by a change in the parent-offspring association. Because spring migration had delayed, the question arose whether the termination of parental care also had delayed. This would indicate a mechanistic link between the decision of commencement of migration and the termination of care, and would allow the barnacle geese to continue transmission of the migratory strategy to their offspring. Therefore, I quantified parental care throughout the season from autumn migration in Estonia to wintering in the Netherlands and through spring migration in Estonia. To quantify parental care, I compared parental geese (geese with offspring) and non-parental geese (geese without offspring). I showed that termination of parental care had not delayed but advanced as compared to the earlier situation, leaving a gap of two months between the estimated end of parental care (March) and the commencement of migration (May). This longer period of ‘adolescence’ and the accompanying exploratory behaviour may have strong influence on the amount of new colonization attempts by these abandoned offspring. In addition to delayed commencement of spring migration, also a non-migratory population emerged in the Netherlands. Life-history theory predicts that 1) higher expected Summary| 117 future reproductive success leads to shorter parental care and 2) decreased benefits of parental care lead to shorter parental care. Both situations apply to the non-migratory population as compared to the migratory population of barnacle geese. Migration is a dangerous life-style, and has become even more dangerous as I showed earlier. Additionally, the non-migratory offspring encounters few dangers, making the benefits of parental care for the parents smaller. Hence, I compared the duration of parental care between migratory and non-migratory barnacle geese. To this end, I also quantified the parental care of the non-migratory population from autumn until spring. I showed that non-migratory barnacle geese take care of their offspring 21% shorter than migratory barnacle geese and terminate care already in November. This suggests a rapid adaptive adjustment of parental care coincident with altered migration. To understand the colonization history of the different populations of the Barnacle Goose, I developed a set of 384 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) specifically for the Barnacle Goose. By genotyping 418 individuals from Greenland, Spitsbergen, Russia, Sweden and the Netherlands (all major populations) I identified significant population structure. The results show that after previously having been separated, population admixture occurs now between all populations, indicated by significant linkage disequilibrium. Because the traditions of migratory behaviour promote differentiation between populations, this admixture suggested that these traditions had broken or had become weaker. We also show that the colonization of the Netherlands is not likely to have occurred by the Swedish population (which emerged ten years before the Dutch population emerged). The Russian and Dutch population are much more alike than the Swedish and Dutch population, indicating colonization of the Netherlands by formerly Russian barnacle geese. In the synthesis I showed that we can use life history trade-offs as indicators of environmental change. Based on the shortening of parental care I concluded that predation danger is a more likely explanation for the commencement of spring migration than food competition in the Baltic. I also showed that the shortening of parental care in the Barnacle Goose is not the norm in the Anatidae family, where the form of parental care is assumed to be very conservative. The observed change in our study showed that either the non-migratory barnacle geese adjusted their parental care unprecedentedly, or that the parental care systems in this family are poorly recorded or understood. Finally, I showed with a mechanistic model of cultural transmission of migratory behaviour that a delay in commencement of spring migration can explain sudden exploratory behaviour and colonization of new breeding areas at the cost of increased offspring mortality. The model also showed that the importance of culture on the transmission of migratory behaviour strongly affected the rate of exploration of new migratory strategies.