Proximate cues to phases of movement in a highly dispersive waterfowl, Anas superciliosa

John F Mcevoy,David A Roshier,Andy T D Bennett,Raoul F H Ribot

doi:10.1186/s40462-015-0048-3

John F Mcevoy, David A Roshier + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-015-0048-3

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Abstract

BackgroundWaterfowl can exploit distant ephemeral wetlands in arid environments and provide valuable insights into the response of birds to rapid environmental change, and behavioural flexibility of avian movements. Currently much of our understanding of behavioural flexibility of avian movement comes from studies of migration in seasonally predictable biomes in the northern hemisphere. We used GPS transmitters to track 20 Pacific black duck (Anas superciliosa) in arid central Australia. We exploited La Niña conditions that brought extensive flooding, so allowing a rare opportunity to investigate how weather and other environmental factors predict initiation of long distance movement toward freshly flooded habitats. We employed behavioural change point analysis to identify three phases of movement: sedentary, exploratory and long distance oriented movement. We then used random forest models to determine the ability of meteorological and remote sensed landscape variables to predict initiation of these phases.ResultsWe found that initiation of exploratory movement phases is influenced by fluctuations in local weather conditions and accumulated rainfall in the landscape. Initiation of long distance movement phases was found to be highly individualistic with minor influence from local weather conditions.ConclusionsOur study reveals how individuals utilise local conditions to respond to changes in resource distribution at broad scales. Our findings suggest that individual movement decisions of dispersive birds are informed by the integration of multiple weather cues operating at different temporal and spatial scales.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40462-015-0048-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Waterfowl can exploit distant ephemeral wetlands in arid environments and provide valuable insights into the response of birds to rapid environmental change, and behavioural flexibility of avian movements
Exploratory phases identified by Behavioural Change Point Analysis (BCPA) corresponded with individual trajectories where individuals moved throughout their local landscape on a 30–60 km scale visiting many locations (See Additional file 1: Appendix 1, Figure A2 for examples)
Exploratory movement phases represented a large proportion of the overall tracking data for birds in the arid zone (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Waterfowl can exploit distant ephemeral wetlands in arid environments and provide valuable insights into the response of birds to rapid environmental change, and behavioural flexibility of avian movements. Several studies have shown that migratory birds adjust the initiation of long distance flight from staging sites in response to daily weather conditions, including wind, temperature and barometric pressure [2,3,4,5,6,7]. By studying species that have closely related members of the same genus in other biomes, where they exhibit different movement behaviours, we can gain insights into the breadth of responses to changes in resource distribution and the cues used to initiate movement. While some migratory species in more predictable seasonal biomes are constrained in terms of their physiology and habitat requirements

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