Community - science reveals delayed fall migration of waterfowl and spatiotemporal effects of a changing climate

Thumbnail image

Download files

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14055

Language of the publication
English
Date
2024-03-14
Type
Article
Author(s)
  • Frei, Barbara
  • Cox, Amelia R.
  • Morales, Ana C.
  • Roy, Christian
Publisher
Wiley

Abstract

  1. Climate change has well-documented, yet variable, influences on the annual movements of migratory birds. The effects of climate change on fall migration remains understudied compared with spring but appears to be less consistent among species, regions and years. Changes in the pattern and timing of waterfowl migration in particular may result in cascading effects on ecosystem function, and socio-economic and cultural outcomes.
  2. We investigated changes in the migration of 15 waterfowl species along a major flyway corridor of continental importance in northeastern North America using 43 years of community-science data. We built spatially- and temporally explicit hierarchical generative additive models for each species and demonstrated that climate, specifically the interaction between minimum temperature and precipitation, significantly influences migration phenology for most species.
  3. Certain species' migratory movements responded to specific temperature thresholds (climate migrants) and others reacted more to the interaction of temperature and precipitation (extreme event migrants). There are already significant changes in the fall migration phenology of common waterfowl species with high ecological and economic importance, which may simply increase in the context of a changing climate.
  4. If not addressed, climate change could induce mismatches in management, regulations and population surveys which would negatively impact the hunting industry. Our findings highlight the importance of considering species-specific spatiotemporal scales of effect on climate on migration and our methods can be widely adapted to quantify and forecast climate-driven changes in wildlife migration.

Subject

  • Nature and environment,
  • Science and technology

Rights

Pagination

377-392

Peer review

Yes

Open access level

Gold

Identifiers

ISSN
1365-2656
0021-8790

Article

Journal title
Journal of Animal Ecology
Journal volume
93
Journal issue
4
Accepted date
2023-12-19
Submitted date
2022-06-29

Download(s)

URI

Collection(s)

Biodiversity

Full item page

Full item page

Page details

Date modified: