Resource tracking within and across continents in long-distance bird migrants
Type
ArticleAuthors
Thorup, Kasper
Tøttrup, Anders P.

Willemoes, Mikkel

Klaassen, Raymond H. G.
Strandberg, Roine
Vega, Marta Lomas

Dasari, Hari Prasad

Araújo, Miguel B.

Wikelski, Martin
Rahbek, Carsten

Date
2017-01-04Online Publication Date
2017-01-04Print Publication Date
2017-01Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/622729
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Migratory birds track seasonal resources across and between continents. We propose a general strategy of tracking the broad seasonal abundance of resources throughout the annual cycle in the longest-distance migrating land birds as an alternative to tracking a certain climatic niche or shorter-term resource surplus occurring, for example, during spring foliation. Whether and how this is possible for complex annual spatiotemporal schedules is not known. New tracking technology enables unprecedented spatial and temporal mapping of long-distance movement of birds. We show that three Palearctic-African species track vegetation greenness throughout their annual cycle, adjusting the timing and direction of migratory movements with seasonal changes in resource availability over Europe and Africa. Common cuckoos maximize the vegetation greenness, whereas red-backed shrikes and thrush nightingales track seasonal surplus in greenness. Our results demonstrate that the longest-distance migrants move between consecutive staging areas even within the wintering region in Africa to match seasonal variation in regional climate. End-of-century climate projections indicate that optimizing greenness would be possible but that vegetation surplus might be more difficult to track in the future.Citation
Thorup K, Tøttrup AP, Willemoes M, Klaassen RHG, Strandberg R, et al. (2017) Resource tracking within and across continents in long-distance bird migrants. Science Advances 3: e1601360. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1601360.Sponsors
K.T. thanks the Danish Council for Independent Research for support to the MATCH project (1323-00048B). K.T., A.P.T., M.W., M.L.V., M.B.A., and C.R. thank the Danish National Research Foundation for support to the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (DNRF96). H.P.D. and M.B.A. also acknowledge support from IC&DT Project (1/SAESCTN/ALENT-07-0224-FEDER-001755).Journal
Science AdvancesAdditional Links
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601360.fullae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1126/sciadv.1601360
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.