Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/30383
Title: Why fly the extra mile? Latitudinal trend in migratory fuel deposition rate as driver of trans‐equatorial long‐distance migration
Contributor(s): Aharon-Rotman, Yaara  (author)orcid ; Gosbell, Ken (author); Minton, Clive (author); Klaassen, Marcel (author)
Publication Date: 2016-09
Early Online Version: 2016-08-25
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2388
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/30383
Abstract: Trans‐equatorial long‐distance migrations of high‐latitude breeding animals have been attributed to narrow ecological niche widths. We suggest an alternative hypothesis postulating that trans‐equatorial migrations result from a possible increase in the rate at which body stores to fuel migration are deposited with absolute latitude; that is, longer, migrations away from the breeding grounds surpassing the equator may actually enhance fueling rates on the nonbreeding grounds and therewith the chance of a successful, speedy and timely migration back to the breeding grounds. To this end, we first sought to confirm the existence of a latitudinal trend in fuel deposition rate in a global data set of free‐living migratory shorebirds and investigated the potential factors causing this trend. We next tested two predictions on how this trend is expected to impact the migratory itineraries on northward migration under the time‐minimization hypothesis, using 56 tracks of high‐latitude breeding shorebirds migrating along the East Asian‐Australasian Flyway. We found a strong positive effect of latitude on fuel deposition rate, which most likely relates to latitudinal variations in primary productivity and available daily foraging time. We next confirmed the resulting predictions that (1) when flying from a stopover site toward the equator, migrants use long jumps that will take them to an equivalent or higher latitude at the opposite hemisphere; and (2) that from here onward, migrants will use small steps, basically fueling only enough to make it to the next suitable staging site. These findings may explain why migrants migrate “the extra mile” across the equator during the nonbreeding season in search of better fueling conditions, ultimately providing secure and fast return migrations to the breeding grounds in the opposite hemisphere.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Ecology and Evolution, 6(18), p. 6616-6624
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Place of Publication: United Kingdom
ISSN: 2045-7758
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 060806 Animal Physiological Ecology
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 310907 Animal physiological ecology
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Appears in Collections:Journal Article
School of Environmental and Rural Science

Files in This Item:
2 files
File Description SizeFormat 
openpublished/WhyAharonRotman2016JournalArticle.pdfPublished version345.26 kBAdobe PDF
Download Adobe
View/Open
Show full item record

SCOPUSTM   
Citations

18
checked on Mar 16, 2024

Page view(s)

1,122
checked on Apr 2, 2023

Download(s)

26
checked on Apr 2, 2023
Google Media

Google ScholarTM

Check

Altmetric


This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons