Assessing migration patterns in Passerina ciris using the world's bird collections as an aggregated resource.

ABSTRACT: Natural history museum collections (NHCs) represent a rich and largely untapped source of data on demography and population movements. NHC specimen records can be corrected to a crude measure of collecting effort and reflect relative population densities with a method known as abundance indices. We plotted abundance index values from georeferenced NHC data in a 12-month series for the new world migratory passerine Passerina ciris across its molting and wintering range in Mexico and Central America. We illustrated a statistically significant change in abundance index values across regions and months that suggests a quasi-circular movement around its non-breeding range, and used enhanced vegetation index (EVI) analysis of remote sensing plots to demonstrate non-random association of specimen

SUBMITTER: Linck E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4830235 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature