Stochastic simulations reveal few green wave surfing populations among spring migrating herbivorous waterfowl

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Date
2019-07-22
Authors
Wang, Xin
Cao, Lei
Fox, Anthony D.
Fuller, Richard
Griffin, Larry
Mitchell, Carl
Zhao, Yunlin
Moon, Oun-Kyong
Cabot, David
Xu, Zhenggang
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Springer Nature Publishing AG
Published Version
10.1038/s41467-019-11151-7
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Abstract
Tracking seasonally changing resources is regarded as a widespread proximate mechanism underpinning animal migration. Migrating herbivores, for example, are hypothesized to track seasonal foliage dynamics over large spatial scales. Previous investigations of this green wave hypothesis involved few species and limited geographical extent, and used conventional correlation that cannot disentangle alternative correlated effects. Here, we introduce stochastic simulations to test this hypothesis using 222 individual spring migration episodes of 14 populations of ten species of geese, swans and dabbling ducks throughout Europe, East Asia, and North America. We find that the green wave cannot be considered a ubiquitous driver of herbivorous waterfowl spring migration, as it explains observed migration patterns of only a few grazing populations in specific regions. We suggest that ecological barriers and particularly human disturbance likely constrain the capacity of herbivorous waterfowl to track the green wave in some regions, highlighting key challenges in conserving migratory birds.
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Keywords
Widespread proximate mechanism , Animal migration , Wave surfing populations , Migrating herbivorous waterfowl , Stochastic simulations
Citation
Wang, X., Cao, L., Fox, A. D., Fuller, R., Griffin, L., Mitchell, C., Zhao, Y., Moon, O.-K., Cabot, D., Xu, Z., Batbayar, N., Kölzsch, A., van der Jeugd, H. P., Madsen, J., Chen, L. and Nathan, R. (2019) 'Stochastic simulations reveal few green wave surfing populations among spring migrating herbivorous waterfowl', Nature Communications, 10(1), 2187 (12pp.) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11151-7
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09971-8
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/8550
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Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences - Journal Articles
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©The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.