AI Article Synopsis
- Migration schedules for birds like the bar-tailed godwit are influenced by their innate quality, non-breeding habitat, and breeding destination.
- The timing of migration from New Zealand to Alaska shows a strong correlation with the birds' specific breeding latitudes, highlighting the importance of destination.
- This migration pattern suggests a controlled routine, where breeding sites primarily dictate the timing of movements throughout the year.
Article Abstract
Despite clear benefits of optimal arrival time on breeding grounds, migration schedules may vary with an individual bird's innate quality, non-breeding habitat or breeding destination. Here, we show that for the bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri), a shorebird that makes the longest known non-stop migratory flights of any bird, timing of migration for individual birds from a non-breeding site in New Zealand was strongly correlated with their specific breeding latitudes in Alaska, USA, a 16,000-18,000 km journey away. Furthermore, this variation carried over even to the southbound return migration, 6 months later, with birds returning to New Zealand in approximately the same order in which they departed. These tightly scheduled movements on a global scale suggest endogenously controlled routines, with breeding site as the primary driver of temporal variation throughout the annual cycle.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1072 | DOI Listing |
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