Abstract
Endogenous programs that regulate annual cycles have been shown for many taxa, including protists, arthropods, fish, mammals and birds. In migration biology, these programs are best known in songbirds. The majority of songbirds rely on a genetic program inherited from their parents that will guide them during their first solo-migration. The phenotypic components of the program are crucial for their individual fitness and survival, and include time components, direction, and distance. This program is constructed to both guide behavior and to regulate flexible responses to the environment at different stages of the annual cycle. The migration program is driven by a circannual rhythm, allowing for, and resetting, carry-over effects. With experience, the migration decisions of individual migrants may be based on information learnt on breeding sites, wintering sites, and en route. At the population level, substantial variation in route choice and timing of migration may be explained by inherited variation of program components, by interactions with environmental and social factors, and by individual learning. In this review we will explore the components of endogenous migration programs and discuss in what ways they can lead to flexibility and variation in migration behavior.
Highlights
Endogenous programs that regulate annual cycles have been shown for many taxa, including protists, arthropods, fish, mammals and birds
The associated periodic movements of organisms, usually recur on time scales defined by geophysical cycles: annual cycles caused by Earth’s orbit around the sun, diel cycles caused by Earth’s rotation around its axis, lunar cycles caused by the orbit of Moon around Earth, and tidal cycles caused by the combined movements of Earth and Moon (DeCoursey, 2004; Figure 1A)
The northern displacement resulted in continued, but somewhat reduced migration activity, suggesting it was the magnetic change itself, and the characteristics of the magnetic parameters, that interacted with the endogenous program resulting in reduced migratory restlessness as the winter destination was geomagnetically reached (Ilieva et al, 2018)
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Endogenous programs that regulate annual cycles have been shown for many taxa, including protists, arthropods, fish, mammals and birds. In migration biology, these programs are best known in songbirds. The phenotypic components of the program are crucial for their individual fitness and survival, and include time components, direction, and distance. This program is constructed to both guide behavior and to regulate flexible responses to the environment at different stages of the annual cycle. Substantial variation in route choice and timing of migration may be explained by inherited variation of program components, by interactions with environmental and social factors, and by individual learning.
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