GPS tracking of non-breeding ravens reveals the importance of anthropogenic food sources during their dispersal in the Eastern Alps.

ABSTRACT: In many songbirds, the space use of breeders is well studied but poorly understood for non-breeders. In common ravens, some studies of non-breeders indicate high vagrancy with large individual differences in home range size, whereas others show that up to 40% of marked non-breeders can be regularly observed at the same anthropogenic food source over months to years. The aim of this study was to provide new insights on ravens' behavior during dispersal in the Eastern Alps. We deployed Global Positioning System (GPS) loggers on 10 individuals to gather accurate spatial and temporal information on their movements to quantify: 1) the dimension of the birds' space use (home range size with seasonal effects and daily/long-term travel distances), 2) how long they stayed in a dispersal stage of wa

SUBMITTER: Loretto MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5829441 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature