Macro-scale avian migration, foraging, and dispersal: environmental and geopolitical perspectives

Abstract

Animal movements are complex behaviors shaped by internal and external processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Until recently, investigations of animal movements across landscapes often favored description over analyses or hypothesis testing. The field of movement ecology arose to address two major obstructions facing quantitative analyses of animal movements: limited data and the need for well-defined methods to test movement hypotheses. Early efforts to systematically collect movement data required marking individual animals with physical tags and recapturing them at a later date. Modern tracking technology can now yield records of location, altitude, and speed at the resolution of minutes, opening up a host of new research questions. Increased availability of high-quality tracking data led to the development of numerous analysis tools that often lead to conflicting interpretations of identical datasets. Here I present novel movement ecology methods and models to characterize movements of migrating and invasive bird species, and address international policy dimensions of migratory species conservation. The first chapter delivers novel applications of circular-linear regression and generalized linear models to relate remotely sensed oceanographic environments to tracking data (global location sensors, GLS) of 11 arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea). The second chapter extends applications of these movement models, testing for environmental drivers of turning angles and path tortuosity of 6 pelagic seabird species in order Procellariiformes. The third chapter describes a series of natal dispersal simulations of the invasion of Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) across North America from 1997 – 2016, incorporating Allee effects, and identifying changes in dispersal behavior on an inter-annual basis. In the final chapter, I investigate participation patterns and species composition of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), suggesting pathways to improved species coverage under the convention.