Study finds migration strategy predicts stopover ecology in shorebirds
Thursday, October 22, 2015 - 10:10
in Biology & Nature
As anyone who has ever taken a long car trip knows, frequent rest and refueling stops are needed to make it to the destination. For migratory birds, this is the case as well, only they fuel up on food during their rest stops and put on large amounts of fat in the process. However, not all bird species have the same migration strategy, that is, in terms of their stopping times and eating rates. Some birds stop and feed for weeks at a time, and some do so for brief periods of one or two days. Now, a new study from online journal Animal Migration, has uncovered one of the reasons for this difference, and it has to do with the length of the next flight.