Date: April 5, 2017
Source: American Ornithological
Society Publications Office
Understanding and managing
migratory animal populations requires knowing what's going on with them during
all stages of their annual cycle -- and how those stages affect each other. The
annual cycle can be especially difficult to study for species that breed in the
Arctic and winter in South America. A new study from The Condor: Ornithological
Applications tackles this problem for Semipalmated Sandpipers, historically one
of the most widespread and numerous shorebird species of the Western
Hemisphere, whose populations in some areas have undergone mysterious declines
in recent years.
Stephen Brown, Vice President of
Shorebird Conservation for Manomet, assembled a large group of partner
organizations to deploy 250 geolocators, tiny devices that use light levels to
determine birds' locations, on adult sandpipers at sites across their breeding
range in the North American Arctic. Recapturing 59 of the birds after a year to
download their data, they found that the eastern and western breeding
populations use separate wintering areas and migration routes. Birds that breed
in the eastern Arctic overwinter in areas of South America where large declines
have been observed. The researchers believe these declines are tied to hunting
on the wintering grounds and habitat alteration at migration stopover sites,
although their precise impacts remain unclear.
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