Dataset Information

Partial altitudinal migration of a Himalayan Forest pheasant.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Altitudinal migration systems are poorly understood. Recent advances in animal telemetry which enables tracking of migrants across their annual cycles will help illustrate unknown migration patterns and test existing hypotheses. Using telemetry, we show the existence of a complex partial altitudinal migration system in the Himalayas and discuss our findings to help better understand partial and altitudinal migration.

Methodology/principal findings

We used GPS/accelerometer tags to monitor the migration of Satyr tragopan (Tragopan satyra) in the Bhutan Himalayas. We tagged 38 birds from 2009 - 2011 and found that tragopans are partially migratory. Fall migration lasted from the 3(rd) week of September till the 3(rd) week of November with migrants traveling distances ranging from 1.25 km to 13.5 km over 1 to 32 days. Snowfall did not influence the onset of migration. Return migration started by the 1(st) week of March and lasted until the 1(st) week of April. Individuals returned within 4 to 10 days and displayed site fidelity. One bird switched from being a migrant to a non-migrant. Tragopans displayed three main migration patterns: 1) crossing multiple mountains; 2) descending/ascending longitudinally; 3) moving higher up in winter and lower down in summer. More females migrated than males; but, within males, body size was not a factor for predicting migrants.

Conclusions/significance

Our observations of migrants traversing over multiple mountain ridges and even of others climbing to higher elevations is novel. We support the need for existing hypotheses to consider how best to explain inter- as well as intra-sexual differences. Most importantly, having shown that the patterns of an altitudinal migration system are complex and not a simple up and down slope movement, we hope our findings will influence the way altitudinal migrations are perceived and thereby contribute to a better understanding of how species may respond to climate change.

SUBMITTER: Norbu N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3637220 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Partial altitudinal migration of a Himalayan Forest pheasant.

Norbu Nawang N Wikelski Martin C MC Wilcove David S DS Partecke Jesko J Ugyen Tenzin Ugyen U Sherub Tempa Tshering T

PloS one 20130426 4

<h4>Background</h4>Altitudinal migration systems are poorly understood. Recent advances in animal telemetry which enables tracking of migrants across their annual cycles will help illustrate unknown migration patterns and test existing hypotheses. Using telemetry, we show the existence of a complex partial altitudinal migration system in the Himalayas and discuss our findings to help better understand partial and altitudinal migration.<h4>Methodology/principal findings</h4>We used GPS/accelerome ...[more]

PMID: 23658608

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Project description:The degree to which interspecific competition structures diverse communities is an oft-debated topic. An approach to answering this question is to examine spatial patterns of coexistence among putatively competing species. The degree to which interspecies competition predominates in a community can have important effects on our ability predict the response of that community to perturbations, most notably climate change, when shifting species' ranges may result in novel species assemblages. We present a study on the avifauna of the Eastern Himalayas. We hypothesize that in a community where competitive interactions predominate, there will be a relationship between pairwise altitudinal overlaps and morphological differences between species. Moreover, we hypothesize that both morphological traits and altitudinal traits depart from a Brownian motion evolution model, resulting in species trait covariances having a phylogenetic component. We find a significant relationship between morphological dissimilarity and altitudinal overlaps of species pairs. We also find that closely related species are significantly more altitudinally stratified than a null model would predict. However, as more distantly related species pairs are included in the analysis, this pattern disappears, indicating that competitive interactions predominate only in closely related species. This is further suggested by the fact that altitudinal ranges themselves are phylogenetically overdispersed at the genus level, as are morphological traits. This effect disappears when the entire phylogeny is examined, with morphology and altitude being phylogenetically underdispersed. Model fitting suggests that individual clades have evolved towards local clade-specific fitness peaks, while within-clade results show evidence of niche partitioning. We interpret these results as a tension between competition on shorter time scales and selection on longer time scales, where competition forces closely-related species away from fitness peaks in order to allow for niche separation and hence coexistence, suggesting that this effect is partially responsible for the recent diversification of Eastern Himalayan avifauna.

Dataset Information

Partial altitudinal migration of a Himalayan Forest pheasant.

Background

Methodology/principal findings

Conclusions/significance

Publications

Partial altitudinal migration of a Himalayan Forest pheasant.

Similar Datasets

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