Seasonally migratory songbirds have different historic population size characteristics than resident relatives.

ABSTRACT: Modern genomic methods enable estimation of a lineage's long-term effective population sizes back to its origins. This ability allows unprecedented opportunities to determine how the adoption of a major life-history trait affects lineages' populations relative to those without the trait. We used this novel approach to study the population effects of the life-history trait of seasonal migration across evolutionary time. Seasonal migration is a common life-history strategy, but its effects on long-term population sizes relative to lineages that don't migrate are largely unknown. Using whole-genome data, we estimated effective population sizes over millions of years in closely related seasonally migratory and resident lineages in a group of songbirds. Our main predictions were borne out: Seas

SUBMITTER: Winker K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12068868 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature