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Abstract
The species-specific migratory patterns and strategies of many songbirds remain unknown or understudied, as research in animal ecology is biased toward the breeding period, with the fewest studies on the migratory period across taxa. Identifying large-scale spatiotemporal migratory patterns is challenging, as individuals within a species may vary in their migratory behavior and strategies. The Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) is a Nearctic-Neotropical migrant that is relatively well studied during the breeding season, but its species-wide migratory patterns remain understudied. Our aim in studying Yellow Warbler movement ecology was to characterize temporal migration patterns during fall migration. We sought to determine the temporal migration pattern among breeding locations, as determined by the hydrogen stable isotope values in feather samples collected at disjunct (~2000 km) stopover sites in the Gulf of Maine (n = 50) and the Gulf of Mexico (n = 150). We used a similarity matrix to group individuals into a geographic cluster by breeding location, which was then used as the response variable in a modeling analysis. Our results provide evidence that Yellow Warblers exhibit an asynchronous, type 1 temporal migration pattern with southern breeding populations initiating migration prior to northern populations. Using hydrogen isotopes, we identified the temporal migration patterns between geographic clusters, representing an individual's breeding location, and stopover sites along the Gulf of Maine and Gulf of Mexico, which fills a gap in understanding Yellow Warbler migration ecology.
Department
Shoals Marine Laboratory
Publication Date
1-1-2024
Journal Title
Avian Conservation and Ecology
Publisher
Resilience Alliance, Inc.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Zenzal, T. J., Jr., A. Contina, H. B. Vander Zanden, L. K. Kuwahara, D. C. Allen, and K. M. Covino. 2024. Asynchronous movement patterns between breeding and stopover locations in a long-distance migratory songbird. Avian Conservation and Ecology 19(2):3. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-02688-190203
Rights
© by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance.
Comments
This is an open access article published by Resilience Alliance, Inc. in Avian Conservation and Ecology in 2024, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ACE-02688-190203