Date: July 11, 2018
Source: American Ornithological Society Publications
Office
Understanding what environmental
cues birds use to time their annual migrations and decide where to settle is
crucial for predicting how they'll be affected by a shifting climate. A new
study from The Auk: Ornithological Advances shows that for two
species of flycatcher, one of the key factors is rain -- the more precipitation
an area receives, the more likely the birds are to be there during the
non-breeding season.
Tulane University's Maggie
MacPherson and her colleagues combined field techniques with species
distribution models to investigate which environmental factors drove the migrations
of Eastern Kingbirds and Fork-tailed Flycatchers. Using geolocators, devices
that record a bird's daily location based on day length, they could track where
individuals of each species went. The two species share similar behavior and
habitat requirements, but differ in their range and migration strategies, and
these strategies were compared to determine the influence of temperature,
precipitation, and primary productivity (the amount of "green"
vegetation). Precipitation turned out to be one of the most important
predictors of their distribution, particularly in the non-breeding season.
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