Spatial variation in the evolutionary potential and constraints of basal metabolic rate and body mass in a wild bird

Abstract

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Long‐distance dispersal in the short‐distance dispersing house sparrow (Passer domesticus)

“…These types of long‐distance dispersal events highlight the potential for colonization of new habitats by house sparrows, which may be an important and hitherto overlooked part of this species success as a global colonizer and invasive species (Anderson, 2006 ; Hanson et al., 2020 ). Future studies may utilize these observations to investigate if individual phenotypic differences in, for example, morphology (Skjelseth et al., 2007 ), physiology (Nafstad et al., 2023 ; Pepke et al., 2022 ), or life‐history characteristics (Pärn et al., 2009 ; Saatoglu et al., 2024 ) underlie longer‐than‐expected dispersal distances (Tufto et al., 2005 ) in a species with very low flight efficiency (Claramunt, 2021 ). If dispersing individuals can successfully recruit into a breeding population, then they can offer a valuable genetic contribution to small, isolated, and often inbred populations (Dickel et al., 2021 ), such as these house sparrow populations habituating to island life on the northern Norwegian coast (Niskanen et al., 2020 ; Ranke et al., 2020 ).…”

“…The above individual is shown carrying nestbuilding materials, en route to the nest site (photo by P. S. Ranke). probabilities across a large geographic area (Jensen et al, 2013;Kvalnes et al, 2017;Nafstad et al, 2023;Ranke et al, 2017Ranke et al, , 2020, have additionally contributed to documenting rare dispersal events, and our intensive field campaign contributes to about half of our documented long-distance dispersal events. Moreover, color-ringed individuals would be more conspicuous and easier to detect also for local inhabitants, which might additionally increase detection probabilities of individuals from our study populations.…”

“…15 and 300 km south of the main study metapopulation during the years 2001-2022 (in total ca. 11,750 house sparrows ringed; Kvalnes et al, 2017;Nafstad et al, 2023;Ranke et al, 2017Ranke et al, , 2020Stubberud et al, 2017), combined with regular ringing recoveries by local inhabitants (Bakken et al, 2006), allow us to explore patterns in a high number of individual house sparrow movements across long periods of time and over large geographical distances, which exceed those of our main study metapopulation (see Figure 1). Here, we aim to describe and document such long-distance dispersal events in reference to the dispersal dynamics within a metapopulation of house sparrows.…”