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Each spring, migratory herbivores around the world track or ‘surf’ green waves of newly emergent vegetation to distant summer or wet‐season ranges. This foraging tactic may help explain the great abundance of migratory herbivores on many seasonal landscapes. However, the underlying fitness benefits of this life‐history strategy remain poorly understood. A fundamental prediction of the green‐wave hypothesis...
While many species suffer from human activities, some like geese benefit and may show range expansions. In some cases geese (partially) gave up migration and started breeding at wintering and stopover grounds. Range expansion may be facilitated and accompanied by physiological changes, especially when associated with changes in migratory behaviour. Interspecific comparisons found that migratory tendency...
The metacommunity, as it evolved from Levins's metapopulation, provides a framework to consider the spatial organization of species interactions. A defining feature of metapopulations and metacommunities is that organisms (populations or communities) are connected via migration. An important result from Levins's metapopulation work – that increasing migration lowers regional extinction probability...
Depicted as predictable movements, migrations can, however, show important interannual variations, making the conservation of migratory species particularly challenging. Plasticity in migratory behaviour allows individuals to adjust their migratory tactics to maximize their fitness. Destination of migration, and therefore migration patterns, may vary according to climatic and environmental conditions...
While host–parasite interactions are ubiquitous, the large‐scale consequences of parasite infections are mainly driven by the spatial context. One trait of pivotal importance for the eco‐evolutionary dynamics of such metapopulations is the spatial behaviour of hosts, that is, their dispersal. It is well established that dispersal is not a random process, rather dispersal is informed and may depend...
Migration has an important impact on the transmission of pathogens. Migratory birds disperse parasites through their routes and may consequently introduce them to new areas and hosts. Hence, haemosporidian parasites, which are among the most prevalent, diverse and important bird pathogens, are potentially dispersed when infecting migrant hosts. Further, migrant hosts could enhance local parasite prevalence...
Synchronous dynamics of populations reduces metapopulation persistence. Thus, determining sources of synchrony is important for understanding metapopulations and biodiversity patterns in response to environmental disturbance. Previously, we found that the experimental extinction of two contiguous subpopulations of the butterfly Parnassius smintheus, increased synchrony among nearby subpopulations...
Seed dispersal by frugivorous bird species involves a fine temporal tuning between fruiting plants and birds. However, this interaction may be severely threatened by anthropogenic climate and land‐use change, which may result in phenological mismatches and pervasive ecological consequences for avian communities. In this study, we evaluate changes at long (~40 years) and short‐time (seasonal) spans...
Trans‐Saharan migratory bird species encounter large scale seasonal atmospheric convergence zones, where opposing monsoon and continental air masses meet. These macro‐scale atmospheric conditions determine local weather, influence migratory and foraging behaviour and seasonal bird survival rates. Here, we investigate the flight behaviour of pallid swifts Apus pallidus, a small aerial insectivore,...
Large‐scale animal migrations influence population and community dynamics along with ecosystem functioning. The migratory coupling concept posits that movement of migrant prey can lead to large‐scale movements of predators. In northern ecosystems, spatial patterns and behavioral responses of grey wolf to spatio‐temporal changes in its primary prey distribution, the migratory caribou, remain poorly...
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