<scp>BirdFlow</scp>: Learning seasonal bird movements from <scp>eBird</scp> data

Fuentes, Miguel; Doren, Benjamin M. Van; Fink, Daniel; Sheldon, Daniel

doi:10.1111/2041-210x.14052

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…Whether the average timing of migratory arrival here may be earlier in this eastern region as a function of migrants employing Antillean or trans‐Caribbean Sea routes is unclear. Future, more detailed radar studies, in conjunction with new information from individual tracking and deeper analyses of eBird data, will likely yield some clarity to the patterns of movements in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (Fuentes et al 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inbound arrivals: using weather surveillance radar to quantify the diurnal timing of spring trans‐Gulf bird migration

Abbott,

Deng,

Badwey

et al. 2023

Ecography

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More than two billion birds migrate through the Gulf of Mexico each spring en route to breeding grounds in the USA and Canada. This region has a long history of complex natural and anthropogenic environments as the northern Gulf coast provides the first possible stopover habitats for migrants making nonstop trans‐Gulf crossings during spring migration. However, intense anthropogenic activity in the region, which is expanding rapidly at present, makes migrants vulnerable to a multitude of obstacles and increasingly fragments and alters these habitats. Understanding the timing of migrants' overwater arrivals has biological value for expanding our understanding of migration ecology relative to decision‐making for nonstop flights, and is imperative for advancing conservation of this critical region through the identification of key times in which to direct conservation actions (e.g. temporary halting of wind turbines, reduction of light pollution). We explored 10 years of weather surveillance radar data from five sites along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast to quantify the daily timing and intensity of arriving trans‐Gulf migrants. On a daily scale, we found that migrant intensity peaked an average of nine hours after local sunrise, occurring earliest at easternmost sites. On a seasonal level, the greatest number of arrivals occurred between late April and early May, with peak intensity occurring latest at westernmost sites. Overall intensity of migration across all 10 years of data was greatest at the westernmost sites and decreased moving farther to the east. These findings emphasize the differential spatial and temporal patterns of use of the Gulf of Mexico region by migrating birds, information that is essential for improving our understanding of the ecology of trans‐Gulf migration and for supporting data‐driven approaches to conservation actions for the migratory birds passing through this critical region.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inbound arrivals: using weather surveillance radar to quantify the diurnal timing of spring trans‐Gulf bird migration

Abbott,

Deng,

Badwey

et al. 2023

Ecography

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“…Within species that seasonally migrate long distances, seasonal variation in thermal sensitivity is difficult to measure because, without knowing which sets of locations have the same individuals (e.g. information on migratory connectivity; [ 59 ]), direct comparisons between populations over time are difficult. However, recent improvements in animal tracking, even for smaller birds, will allow direct comparisons of thermal sensitivity at the population or individual level even for migratory species [ 60 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and seasonal variation in thermal sensitivity within North American bird species

Cohen,

Fink,

Zuckerberg

2023

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Responses of wildlife to climate change are typically quantified at the species level, but physiological evidence suggests significant intraspecific variation in thermal sensitivity given adaptation to local environments and plasticity required to adjust to seasonal environments. Spatial and temporal variation in thermal responses may carry important implications for climate change vulnerability; for instance, sensitivity to extreme weather may increase in specific regions or seasons. Here, we leverage high-resolution observational data from eBird to understand regional and seasonal variation in thermal sensitivity for 21 bird species. Across their ranges, most birds demonstrated regional and seasonal variation in both thermal peak and range, or the temperature and range of temperatures when observations peaked. Some birds demonstrated constant thermal peaks or ranges across their geographical distributions, while others varied according to local and current environmental conditions. Across species, birds typically demonstrated either geographical or seasonal adaptation to climate. Local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity are likely important but neglected aspects of organismal responses to climate change.

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“…These models are designed to use population-level data to estimate population-level traits (e.g. migratory connectivity), and to predict movement between spatial cells across time (Fuentes et al, 2023;Meehan et al, 2022;Vincent et al, 2022). Although useful for answering targeted questions, these models are currently limited in the breadth of questions they can address.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although useful for answering targeted questions, these models are currently limited in the breadth of questions they can address. Critically, previous such attempts to simulate migration do not account for individual variation in behaviour, instead either circumventing the representation of individual behaviour all together (Meehan et al, 2022), or deriving estimates of individual movement from the modelled probabilistic flow of whole populations between spatial cells (Fuentes et al, 2023;Vincent et al, 2022). Without the biologically realistic representation of how individuals move across the landscape, including biological constraints (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual‐based models of avian migration for estimating behavioural traits and predicting ecological interactions

Tonelli,

Zelin,

Dearborn

et al. 2023

Methods Ecol Evol

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Rapid advances in the field of movement ecology have led to increasing insight into both the population‐level abundance patterns and individual‐level behaviour of migratory species. Despite this progress, research questions that require scaling individual‐level understanding of the behaviour of migrating organisms to the population level remain difficult to investigate. To bridge this gap, we introduce a generalizable framework for training full‐annual cycle individual‐based models of migratory movements by combining information from tracking studies and species occurrence records. Focusing on migratory birds, we call this method: Models of Individual Movement of Avian Species (MIMAS). We implement MIMAS to design individual‐based models of avian migration that are trained using previously published weekly occurrence maps and fit via Approximate Bayesian Computation. MIMAS models leverage individual‐ and population‐level information to faithfully represent continental‐scale migration patterns. Models can be trained successfully for species even when little existing individual‐level data is available for parameterization by relying on population‐level information. In contrast to existing mathematical models of migration, MIMAS explicitly represents and estimates behavioural attributes of migrants. MIMAS can additionally be used to simulate movement over consecutive migration seasons, and models can be easily updated or validated as new empirical data on migratory behaviours becomes available. MIMAS can be applied to a variety of research questions that require representing individual movement at large scales. We demonstrate three applied uses for MIMAS: estimating population‐specific migratory phenology, predicting the spatial patterns and magnitude of ectoparasite dispersal by migrants, and simulating the spread of a pathogen across the annual cycle of a migrant species. Currently, MIMAS can easily be used to build models for hundreds of migratory landbird species but can also be adapted in the future to build models of other types of migratory animals.

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BirdFlow: Learning seasonal bird movements from eBird data

Cited by 12 publications

References 44 publications

Inbound arrivals: using weather surveillance radar to quantify the diurnal timing of spring trans‐Gulf bird migration

Inbound arrivals: using weather surveillance radar to quantify the diurnal timing of spring trans‐Gulf bird migration

Spatial and seasonal variation in thermal sensitivity within North American bird species

Individual‐based models of avian migration for estimating behavioural traits and predicting ecological interactions

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