Movement ecology research to advance conservation of South America's grassland migratory birds

Nestedness structure of bird assemblages in a fragmented forest in Central Argentina: the role of selective extinction and colonization processes

“…Moreover, as has been demonstrated in other studies (Watling and Donnelly, 2006;Matthews et al, 2015), it is very difficult to find biologically meaningful isolation effects on assemblage structure. In the case of bird communities in South America, it is even more challenging considering knowledge of colonization ability or dispersal rate of species is scarce (Faaborq et al, 2010;Jahn et al, 2017). It is therefore challenging to assess the role of selective colonization hypothesis in the assemblage structure of Espinal forest birds.…”

Migration Patterns of Upland Sandpipers in the Western Hemisphere

“…In evolutionary ecology, the adaptive significance of migration is considered in terms of tradeoffs between the demographic costs and benefits of movement, and the role of past events and phylogenetic history in shaping migratory routes (Ruegg and Smith, 2002;Alerstam et al, 2003). In conservation biology, increasing concerns about population declines among migratory species have increased interest in identifying stages of the annual cycle and sites where conservation actions can be targeted, and understanding patterns of migratory connectivity that link spatially structured populations at different stages of the annual cycle (Vickery et al, 1999;Fraser et al, 2012;Jahn et al, 2017;Pearce-Higgins et al, 2017;Cohen et al, 2018). Integration of knowledge across these four key areas has become the basis for development of full-annual-cycle (FAC) models (Hostetler et al, 2015;Marra et al, 2015).…”

“…The migratory shorebirds that breed or stage in native grasslands of North America include both short-distance migrants that remain on the continent (Page et al, 2014;Pierce et al, 2017;Ruthrauff et al, 2019), and long-distance migrants that travel to South America (Blanco and López-Lanús, 2008;Penner et al, 2015;Jahn et al, 2017). In the Western Hemisphere, intercontinental shorebird migrants must cross major ecological barriers including the water barriers of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, high elevation terrain in the Andes mountains, and unsuitable habitats including the vast tropical forests of the Amazon Basin (Bayly et al, 2018).…”

“…Threats on the breeding grounds include habitat loss due to expansion of rowcrop agriculture and afforestation in New England (Vickery et al, 1999;Foster et al, 2002), and habitat degradation due to changes in rangeland management in the Great Plains (Sandercock et al, 2015;Hill and Renfrew, 2019a). Threats on the non-breeding grounds include intensification of livestock grazing and loss of grasslands to rowcrops (Blanco and López-Lanús, 2008;Jahn et al, 2017). Threats during migration include exposure to agricultural chemicals and legal harvest (Strum et al, 2010;Pérez-Arteaga et al, 2019), and regular mortality events have been reported at high elevation lakes in the central Andes of Ecuador (Vickery et al, 2010).…”

“…Threats during migration include exposure to agricultural chemicals and legal harvest (Strum et al, 2010;Pérez-Arteaga et al, 2019), and regular mortality events have been reported at high elevation lakes in the central Andes of Ecuador (Vickery et al, 2010). Conservation planning for Upland Sandpiper has been difficult because migratory strategies, key habitats, and migratory connectivity have been unknown (Vickery et al, 2010;Jahn et al, 2017).…”