Experience drives innovation of new migration patterns of whooping cranes in response to global change
- Anthropogenic changes in climate and land use are driving changes in migration patterns of birds worldwide. Spatial changes in migration have been related to long-term temperature trends, but the intrinsic mechanisms by which migratory species adapt to environmental change remain largely unexplored. We show that, for a long-lived social species, older birds with more experience are critical for innovating new migration behaviours. Groups containing older, more experienced individuals establish new overwintering sites closer to the breeding grounds, leading to a rapid population-level shift in migration patterns. Furthermore, these new overwintering sites are in areas where changes in climate have increased temperatures and where food availability from agriculture is high, creating favourable conditions for overwintering. Our results reveal that the age structure of populations is critical for the behavioural mechanisms that allow species to adapt to global change, particularly for long-lived animals, where changes in behaviour can occur faster than evolution.
Author: | Claire S. Teitelbaum, Sarah J. Converse, William F. FaganORCiD, Katrin Böhning-GaeseORCiDGND, Robert B. O'HaraORCiD, Anne E. Lacy, Thomas MuellerORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-451406 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12793 |
ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
Pubmed Id: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27597446 |
Parent Title (English): | Nature Communications |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group UK |
Place of publication: | London |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2016 |
Date of first Publication: | 2016/09/06 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2017/11/28 |
Tag: | animal migration; behavioural ecology; climate-change ecology; conservation biology |
Volume: | 7 |
Issue: | 12793 |
Page Number: | 7 |
Note: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
HeBIS-PPN: | 425327396 |
Institutes: | Biowissenschaften / Biowissenschaften |
Angeschlossene und kooperierende Institutionen / Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft | |
Fachübergreifende Einrichtungen / Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F) | |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 59 Tiere (Zoologie) / 590 Tiere (Zoologie) |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Open-Access-Publikationsfonds: | Biowissenschaften |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |