Comprehensive estimation of spatial and temporal migratory connectivity across the annual cycle to direct conservation efforts

Elly C Knight,Gretchen N Newberry,Jeffrey T Foster,Emily Angell,Andrea Sidler,Samuel Haché,Junior A Tremblay,Kevin C Hannah,David L Swanson,Amy L Scarpignato,Tara L Imlay,Wendy E Easton,Jaime L Stephens,Erin M Bayne,Peter P Marra,Stuart A Mackenzie,Pam H Sinclair,Timothy R Forrester,Kristina G Hick,Steven L Van Wilgenburg,Jacques Ibarzabal,R Mark Brigham,Reed Bowman ,A.c Marsh ,Autumn-Lynn Harrison ,L Mcguire ,David J Newstead ,Benoît Drolet ,John N Ng

doi:10.1111/ecog.05111

Abstract

Migratory connectivity is the degree to which populations are linked in space and time across the annual cycle. Low connectivity indicates mixing of populations while high connectivity indicates population separation in space or time. High migratory connectivity makes individual populations susceptible to local environmental conditions; therefore, evaluating migratory connectivity continuously across a species range is important for understanding differential population trends and revealing places and times contributing to these differences. The common nighthawk Chordeiles minor is a widespread, declining, long‐distance migratory bird. Variable population trends across the nighthawk breeding range suggest that knowledge of migratory connectivity is needed to direct conservation. We used GPS tags to track 52 individuals from 12 breeding populations. We estimated migratory connectivity as 0.29 (Mantel coefficient: 0 = no connectivity, 1 = full connectivity) between the breeding and wintering grounds. We then estimated migratory connectivity at every latitude (spatial connectivity) or day (temporal connectivity) of migration and smoothed those migratory connectivity estimates to produce continuous migratory connectivity ‘profiles'. Spatial and temporal connectivity were highest during migration through North America (around 0.3–0.6), with values generally around 0 in Central and South America due to mixing of populations along a common migratory route and similar migration timing across populations. We found local peaks in spatial and temporal connectivity during migration associated with crossing the Gulf of Mexico. We used simulations to estimate the probability that our method missed peaks (spatial: 0.12, temporal: 0.18) or detected false peaks (spatial: 0.11, temporal: 0.37) due to data gaps and showed that our approach remains useful even for sparse and/or sporadic location data. Our study presents a generalizable approach to evaluating migratory connectivity across the full annual cycle that can be used to focus migratory bird conservation towards places and times of the annual cycle where populations are more likely to be limited.

Highlights

Conservation of migratory birds is complicated by the multitude of natural and anthropogenic factors influencing populations across their annual cycle
We comprehensively examined spatial and temporal connectivity across the annual cycle of the common nighthawk using a novel approach
We found low spatial connectivity outside of the breeding grounds due to the use of a single route for much of this species’ spring and fall migration and mixing of populations on the wintering grounds, primarily in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes of Brazil

Summary

Introduction

Conservation of migratory birds is complicated by the multitude of natural and anthropogenic factors influencing populations across their annual cycle. Research has focused on population pressures during the breeding season; the drivers of population declines can occur during migration or on the wintering grounds (Marra et al 2015). Those drivers can operate at the species level, affecting all populations or at the population level, resulting in differential regional trends (Cresswell 2014). Migratory connectivity is high when individuals remain spatially separated into populations between seasons of the annual cycle and low when individuals from multiple populations mix (Fig. 1). High temporal connectivity results in spatial separation of populations, but only for a specific period of time (Fig. 1). It is important to evaluate temporal as well as spatial connectivity because populations with low spatial connectivity at a particular location (e.g. migratory stopover) could have high temporal connectivity if individual populations migrate through that location at different times (Fig. 1; Bauer et al 2016, Briedis et al 2016, van Wijk et al 2018)

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