Lamarre, J.-F. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2024

The collective application of shorebird tracking data to conservation

Addressing urgent conservation issues, like the drastic declines of North American migratory birds, requires creative, evidence-based, efficient, and collaborative approaches. Over 50% of monitored North American shorebird populations have lost over 50% of their abundance since 1980. To address these declines, we developed a partnership of scientists and practitioners called the Shorebird Science and Conservation Collective (hereinafter "the Collective"). Here, we present this successful case study as an example for others engaged in translational science. The Collective acts as an intermediary whereby dedicated staff collate and analyze data contributions from scientists to support knowledge requests from conservation practitioners. Data contributions from 74 organizations include over 6.7 million shorebird locations forming movement paths of 3,345 individuals representing 36 species tracked across the Americas. We describe the founding and structure of the Collective and conservation activities we supported in our first two years. As the volume of scientific data on animal movements continues to grow, groups like the Collective can be vital liaisons to rapidly integrate and interpret research to support conservation action.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

No evidence for disruption of global patterns of nest predation in shorebirds

Kubelka et al. (Science, 9 November 2018, p. 680-683) claim that climate change has disrupted patterns of nest predation in shorebirds. They report that predation rates have increased since the 1950s, especially in the Arctic. We describe methodological problems with their analyses and argue that there is no solid statistical support for their claims.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2016

Unexpected diversity in socially synchronized rhythms of shorebirds

The behavioural rhythms of organisms are thought to be under strong selection, influenced by the rhythmicity of the environment1-4. Such behavioural rhythms are well studied in isolated individuals under laboratory conditions1,5, but free-living individuals have to temporally synchronize their activities with those of others, including potential mates, competitors, prey and predators6-10. Individuals can temporally segregate their daily activities (e.g. prey avoiding predators, subordinates avoiding dominants) or synchronize their activities (e.g. group foraging, communal defence, pairs reproducing or caring for offspring)6-9,11. The behavioural rhythms that emerge from such social synchronization and the underlying evolutionary and ecological drivers that shape them remain poorly understood5-7,9. Here, we address this in the context of biparental care, a particularly sensitive phase of social synchronization12 where pair members potentially compromise their individual rhythms. Using data from 729 nests of 91 populations of 32 biparentally-incubating shorebird species, where parents synchronize to achieve continuous coverage of developing eggs, we report remarkable within- and between-species diversity in incubation rhythms. Between species, the median length of one parents incubation bout varied from 1 - 19 hours, while period length-the time in which a parents probability to incubate cycles once between its highest and lowest value - varied from 6 - 43 hours. The length of incubation bouts was unrelated to variables reflecting energetic demands, but species relying on crypsis (the ability to avoid detection by other animals) had longer incubation bouts than those that are readily visible or actively protect their nest against predators. Rhythms entrainable to the 24-h light-dark cycle were less prevalent at high latitudes and absent in 18 species. Our results indicate that even under similar environmental conditions and despite 24-h environmental cues, social synchronization can generate far more diverse behavioural rhythms than expected from studies of individuals in captivity5-7,9. The risk of predation, not the risk of starvation, may be a key factor underlying the diversity in these rhythms.

animal behavior and cognition↗