EEB Student Thesis Defense: Comparing Methods to Estimate the Seasonal Migration Distance of Passerine Birds

EEB Student Thesis Defense presented by Andrea Benavides Castaño.
Abstract: Over many decades, migratory birds have experienced significant population declines. Understanding where they occur in space and time is fundamental to addressing those declines and understanding other attributes to their life history. Geolocators attached to individual birds and range maps summarizing the seasonal distributions of species provide two sources of information to estimate migration distance and have revealed important discoveries about the migration journey. Studying migration distance is important because it can influence the timing, speed, and duration of migration, reproduction, and more. However, it is not clear how closely aligned the estimates of migration distance are between these two different methods. For this reason, I compared the migration distance from geolocators and range maps of 24 species of North American passerine birds. Both geolocators and range maps can be a powerful consideration to determine conservation strategies throughout birds’ migration routes.