Experience reduces reliance on conspecifics for route selection by a collectively migrating soaring bird

Abstract

Migration can be an energetically costly behavior with strong fitness consequences in terms of mortality and reproduction 1-11. Migrants should select migratory routes to minimize their costs, but both costs and benefits may change with experience 12-14. This raises the question of whether experience changes how individuals select their migratory routes. Here we investigate the effect of age on route selection criteria in a collectively migrating soaring bird, the white stork (Ciconia ciconia). We perform step selection analysis on a longitudinal data set tracking 158 white storks over up to nine years to quantify how they select their routes based on the social and atmospheric environments, and to examine how this selection changes with age. We find clear ontogenetic shifts in route selection criteria. Juveniles choose routes that have good atmospheric conditions and high conspecific densities. Yet, as they gain experience storks selection on the availability of social information reduces--after their fifth migration experienced birds also choose routes with low conspecific densities. Thus, our results suggest that as individuals age, they gradually replace information gleaned from other individuals with information gained from experience, allowing them to shift their migration timing and increasing the time scale at which they select their routes.