Long-distance migrants vary migratory behaviour as much as short-distance migrants: An individual-level comparison from a seabird species with diverse migration strategies.

ABSTRACT: As environmental conditions fluctuate across years, seasonal migrants must determine where and when to move without comprehensive knowledge of conditions beyond their current location. Animals can address this challenge by following cues in their local environment to vary behaviour in response to current conditions, or by moving based on learned or inherited experience of past conditions resulting in fixed behaviour across years. It is often claimed that long-distance migrants are more fixed in their migratory behaviour because as distance between breeding and wintering areas increases, reliability of cues to predict distant and future conditions decreases. While supported by some population-level studies, the influence of migration distance on behavioural variation is seldom examined on a

SUBMITTER: Brown JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8247866 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature