Editorial: Ecophysiological adaptations associated with animal migration

Abstract

the Research Topic Ecophysiological adaptations associated with animal migration Seasonal migration to track favorable environmental conditions and resources is a widespread strategy across all animal taxa, including insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Migration distances can range from meters to tens of thousands of kilometers (Hansson and Åkesson, 2014). This period is often resource-demanding (Sapir et al., 2011) and migrants regularly encounter challenging conditions en route, including extreme and/or fluctuating temperature, humidity, solar radiation, osmotic stress, pathogen pressure, pollution, and hypoxia (Figure 1). Migrants cope with these challenges via a multitude of physiological adaptations (e.g., McCormick and Saunders, 1987;Piersma and Van Gils, 2011;Gwinner, 2012;Cooper-Mullin and McWilliams, 2016;Hegemann et al., 2019), which can conflict with other important annual-cycle and life-history events such as growth, reproduction and molt. Migration therefore represents one of the most significant physiological challenges in the life of an animal, yet our understanding of the interplay between different physiological adaptations and the currencies involved (energy, nutrients, time, etc.) is still limited (Hegemann et al., 2019). To better understand the ecology and evolution of migration and to highlight important directions for future work, this Research Topic presents studies demonstrating recent advancements in our knowledge of the ecophysiological underpinnings of migration at different stages and scales.