MIGRATE: Notes of first
meeting
Dates: 8-11 March 2007
Location:
Participants (contact information in appendix)
Lead investigators
Jeff Kelly –
Sarah Mabey –
Frank Moore -
James A. Smith - NASA
Tom Smith - UCLA
Collaborators
Stuart Bearhop –
Carroll Belser –
Keith Bildstein –
Isabella Bisson –
Gabriel Bowen –
Melissa Bowlin –
Jeff Buler –
Antonio Cellis –
Jill Deppe –
Robb Diehl –
Linda Fink –
Adam Fudickar –
Sid Gauthreaux –
Chris Guglielmo –
Sue Haig –
Keith Hobson – Canadian Wildlife Service
Darren Irwin –
Alex Jahn –
Eileen Kirsch – USGS
Tom Kunz –
Keith Larson – Klamath Bird Observatory
Astalfo Mata – Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas
Ryan Norris –
Jackie Parrite –
Kristina Paxton –
Doug Robinson –
Judy Shamoun-Baranes – Universiteit van Amsterdam
Susan Skagen –
Fernando Spina – Instituto Nazionale per la Selvatica
Caz Taylor –
Kasper Thorup –
Len Wassemaar – Environment
David Winkler –
Michael Wunder –
Reporter: Ellen Paul – Ornithological Council
See MIGRATE website at
http://www.migrate.ou.edu/index.htm
for a full list of collaborators.
MAY 8
INTRODUCTORY MATTERS
Research Coordination Networks
J. Kelly – explained the purpose and restrictions of an NSF
Research Coordination Network. The Network can’t fund research but can fund all
the activities around it so the group needs to decide what they want to do –
what are the most important questions that need to be answered. The networking
began about five years ago with informal discussions <see http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=11691&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund
for information about the Research Coordination Networks in Biological Sciences
grants>
S. Mabey – The NSF RCN is designed to create the amorphous entities
that bring people together to generate ideas and is interested in more than
single ideas. All the collaborators are dreaming about how to track birds
across space and time. It is compelling and exciting and will push forward work
in ecology, evolution, and conservation. What made this proposal stand out were
some of the subtle aspects of the program that NSF wants to promote. When the
principal invesigators were drafting the proposal they paid close attention to
NSF’s program goals, including opportunities to enhance education – undergrad
and grad training not just in ecology but across disciplines. The idea is to
pull together ecologists, biomathemeticians, biochemists, etc and give students
the tools they need to succeed as scientists in today’s environment. This is a
major goal of this RCN and they hope to start developing training courses as
soon - as possible but certainly over the next five years – to give students
exposure to and training in techniques across fields.
Another idea is that network will evolve over time. It is
meant to be dynamic, not stay static over time. Membership should evolve and
grow over the five years.
It is also important to include underrepresented groups and
the RCN will look to fields other than ecology may have greater mix of people.
When writing the proposal the principal investigators thought about how the
host institutions could feed into this goal – e.g.,
These components probably gave this proposal an edge. It is
important to think about how to build these components as they move into
discussions.
J. Smith – recommended that if collaborators visit NSF, they
visit the program manager (Peter McCartney, Biological Infrastucture – e-mail =
biorcn@nsf.gov, phone = 703 292-8470) and
say a few good words.
Review of agenda
Wednesday 8 May
Session I: Identify the “big questions” in bird migration
(starts at page 5)
Session II: Dicuss the pros, cons of focusing on certain
species, groups (starts at page 15)
Thursday 9 May
Session III: Technologies for tracking (starts at page 24)
Session IV: Analytical challenges – how to bring together
(starts at page 35)
Saturday 10 May
Morning - Time for collaborations that form during
conference to sit and talk about what they want to do together
Session V: Afternoon – figure out how the network infrastructure will work – committees who will decide who will do what, what the training courses will look like, who will teach, where held, how to enhance existing courses, governance issues (who does what, tenure)
(Starts at page 39)
Sunday 11 May
Session VI: What next for the coming year? What sort of products are reasonable to try for?
(Starts at page XX)
- Success
depends on participation and open dialogue
- Keep thinking about synthesis program – use mental model of an edited volume – questions, model species, technologies, analytical methods – during breakouts and discussion forums, think about what the network can do that will strengthen your research program or allow you to do things that you couldn’t do because you didn’t have the collaborators or funding for non-research components of the work – keep thinking about the product that will advance the purpose of the RCN
SESSION I: BIG
QUESTIONS IN BIRD MIGRATION
The PIs anticipate that the projects that develop from the MIGRATE RCN will fall into one of these four big categories:
Evolutionary
Ecological
Conservation
Anthropocentric
Discussion
K. Hobson: does NSF require a product – e.g., a report
J. Kelly: Expectations are the same for any NSF grant; the PIs
have to show that they have supported activities that support grant proposals
submitted and that support scientific publications, but there is no specific
requirement of a written product
S. Mabey: We do need to have the infrastructure ready to go
by Sunday so PIs can report to NSF how the network will operate. NSF needs a
tangible product and the RCN should track things like grant proposals and
papers generated out of this meeting; should also write up things like training
proposals
J. Smith: The RCN is really an enabler of science, so useful
products would also include things like special sessions at scientific
meetings. Keep the NSF program manager well-informed and invite him to meetings.
K.
Paxton: To what extent does the education mandate go beyond courses for
undergrads and grads - does it also include K-12, training?
S. Mabey: They proposed undergrad and grad courses –
intensive experience with field techniques in field ecology and biomaps,
engineering, wireless sensor networks, ecology, biochem. It was envisioned as an
intensive, cross-disciplinary course for students but others could participate.
They also proposed lab exchange visits so one person could go to another
university to learn another technique; the RCN can fund that and it includes
the RCN participants though the bulk of the resources are for students. They
also included public education/outreach -such as citizen science – as an avenue
for teaching (e.g., how to collect data for network-sponsored activities) but
also to get information out to the general public. Unfortunately, people in
this network are not well connected to existing migration projects.
S. Gauthreaux: What is the anthropocentric aspects of the
issue?
J. Kelly: Issues such as bird collisions with aircraft.
These may not be conservation issues, but it pertains to any issues involving
humans.
S. Gauthreaux: Does citizen science come under that heading,
e.g., developers of wind farms have no idea that most migration takes place at
night. Would this be considered education?
S. Mabey: Education crosses the categories
J. Kelly: That is for the RCN to decide – these are
categories to start with but the RCN
will decide how to organize itself.
D. Winkler: Another kind of anthropocentric activity would
be using migratory birds as a way to attract people to educational activities –
particularly the “amazing” migrants such as Blackpoll Warblers or Bar-tailed
Godwits.
Breakout groups
J. Kelly: Charge to
breakout groups - the overarching question is this: in the next five years, if
you had better ability to track your migrants, over their entire lives, what questions
would you ask first?
- What is the state of the knowledge regarding that question
now?
- Where are the cutting edges?
- What are the critical data that are needed (about
individuals, populations, particular parameters)?
- How does this network fit into that?
- Define success of the network (not for individual
investigators, but what did the network do to help get this knowledge or
improve the ability to get this knowledge).
Full group brainstorm
session preceded breakout to identify major questions
K. Hobson: What
factors affect ultimate fitness of individuals throughout their migratory cycle
– what happens at one point of that cycle that affects lifetime fitness
Speaker?:
What factors limit or regulate populations
D. Robinson: When do birds die? Post-fledging survival is a
big unknown, annual survival.
S. Gauthreaux: We
need to also know where and how bird die.
I. Bisson: We should be tracking partially migratory species
to see if they can change that strategy based on environmental factors
S. Bearhap: We need
to identify the extrinsic and intrinsic factors, e.g. correlation between
selection and fitness. What factors result from intrinsic qualities of
individuals vs. habitat quality?
D. Robinson: Plasticity of migration - so we can address responses of birds to
climate change.
D. Winkler: There are two fundamental operational questions
– where is bird when throughout annual cycle and aspects of its state at each point
(localization and state). This information would allow us to answer the larger
questions.
D. Irwin: When 2 groups of highly divergent migrants come
together, where do the hybrids go?
J. Parrite: What is the best conservation strategy to
protect migratory bird populations? Where should we be preserving land and how
much?
L. Wassemaar: Where do birds come from and where do they go?
E. Kirsch: How much
mortality can we influence and how much is beyond our reach e.g., weather-related?
S. Haig: Compare migrants w/ residents that occupy the same
space in time, to get ideas of limiting factors for each (of same species).
M. Bowlin: How and
why does migration evolve? Look at migrants and residents. of same species to
get at that question.
S. Gauthreaux: Tease apart dispersal movements from
migration and how they might be linked, if at all.
S. Bearhop: Nonconspecifics
are of interest, too, especially on wintering grounds, because resident fauna
interact with the migrants.
S. Skagen: Is there a threshhold beyond which the plasticity
can’t allow the birds to deal with a given challenge? Example: intensity of
diet changes on wintering grounds and interactions with similar resident
species
J. Shamoun-Baranes: How to use tracking and how it will get
at some of these questions – won’t get at individual interactions so what other
techniques are needed.
R. Norris: Optimizing habitat conservation decisions –
conservation plans might otherwise make wrong choices.
K. Hobson: From a conservation perspective we need to know
spatial pattern of young of year production – where are they produced
(spatially). Isotopes can fingerprint where they are coming from and which
habitats.
I. Bisson: We need more information about tropical (austral) migration systems.
S. Haig: Where birds find their mates – what stage of the
annual cycle, what point in life?
R. Diehl: How birds behave in the air – responses to
weather, geographic barriers.
J. Kelly: Migratory
strategies, e.g., how much time in flight and how that might change.
J. Deppe: Focus on fall migration – time limits, energy
limits – might get at strategies e.g., how long at stopover sites.
S. Skagen: An emerging question in the West – are there
specific sites for molting stages?
S. Gauthreaux: Site fidelity w/ respect to sites along
migration routes – how constant over multiple seasons do birds use the same
routes and stopover areas?
J. Kelly: Think about to what extent this network ought to
be interested in taxa other than birds and what commonalities are uniform about
long distance movement.
J. Parrite: What answers would be most valuable in trying
teach migration to people who are not scientists about the value and importance
of bird migration.
K. Thorup: Tracking gives us a unique opportunity to follow
individuals. To date it has been population level but tracking allows us to get
at the individuals that make up the population.
Understanding intrinsic v. extrinsic factors necessary to
figure out what we can/cannot do to respond
C.
Guglielmo: How do you measure intrinsic factors – physiological v.
behavioral and how to measure constraints – what technologies can be used?
S. Mabey: Tracking individuals and offspring also allows us
to study genetics.
D. Winkler: Individual-level data will allow us to reconstruct
what birds have experienced in the environment during their travels – there are
physiological constraints and information constraints (what the animal can know
and how it can use that information to respond)
K. Bildstein:
T. Kunz: Bring in atmospheric scientists who can model the
extrinsic factors – this has been overlooked and should be integrated despite
problems of scale (e.g., Google Earth, air masses and currents). Scale is very
important because to answer questions about state of bird at point in time,
space requires info about the environment at those places and times
S. Gauthreaux: What does “tracking” imply?
J. Kelly: He means it as some probabilistic understanding of
where an individual is at some point in its life. It can include real-time GPS
or satellite tracking to intrinsic marker of a location.
S. Gauthreaux: Or it can mean a band on a leg and a network
of observatories.
J. Kelly: Different data permit different inferences.
K. Hobson: What factors affect ultimate fitness of
individuals throughout their migratory cycle – what happens at one point of
that cycle that affects lifetime fitness? What factors regulate populations?
Organizing breakouts
to discuss big questions in bird migration
Groups (organized by numbering off) should discuss:
1 - Population dynamics (ecological, conservation
perspectives)
2- Individual fitness
3- Evolution of behavior in migration – plasticity v.
constraints (evolutionary history) and how they respond over ecological
timeframes to changes. This can have different perspectives, including:
Population v. individual
Environments through which animals move
Applications/conservation
4- Interaction w/ environment (habitat, landscape,
atmospheric). Consider these aspects:
In flight v. on ground
Pre, post, during
migration phases of annual cycle
Final instructions to breakout groups (J. Kelly):
- Keep focused on how this will lead to research questions
- Try to integrate across annual cycle so probably not best to break into groups that focus on individual components of the cycle
- Increase knowledge of migratory systems
- Look
at the NSF programs – Division of Environmental Biology, Infrastructure,
Behavioral, etc. – which division would you submit your proposals to?
Each of the six breakout groups was asked to discuss all
four topics and identify the most pressing research topics
Breakout reporting
Group 1
1.
Migration Plasticity (lump with # 3, also
Global Climate Change)
a. In flight: Need to know mortality, patterns across time and space
(longitude/latitude/altitude)
b. How quickly can populations adapt to change? particularly with respect
to migratory pathways and patterns
c. What are the anthropogenic effects on migration patterns?
d. Need to be able to follow individuals on migration
e. Need to understand how different populations react to these conditions
to understand plasticity potential—need to be able to address these questions
for populations across the species range
2.
Evolution of Migration Behavior
a. How quickly can you see a response in individuals/populations?
b. Can individuals develop new plasticity?
c. Need to have enough time for genetics to change in population, for selection
to operate.
d. How is migration evolving now?
Why?
e. Understand the effects of climate change on migration.
f.
What are commonalities among taxa (avian
and other) in migration patterns/strategies, etc.
3.
Mortality – where/how do birds die?
a. Link estimates of productivity and mortality per population in space
and time.
b. Link above to what is going on climatically
c. Determine what age/sex/phase of the annual cycle mortality occurs.
d. How is it related to land cover and change?
4.
Population Connectivity/Disease
Transmission
a. Need to understand migration patterns to understand DT.
b. Need to understand if migratory birds actually transmit disease to
humans.
c. Need to understand population connectivity throughout the annual cycle.
5.
Effect of human-induced habitat change on
-
a. Stopover sites
b. Productivity and survival
6. Potential products from MIGRATE:
a. Review paper summarizing what is known about what has been learned about the effects of global climate change on birds (and other taxa) with associated searchable/updated database
b. Review paper summarizing what we know about population connectivity throughout the annual cycle and how it could effect disease transmission with associated searchable/updated database
c. Technology development
d. Data sharing
Group 2
- Population
Dynamics
a. Does most
mortality take place during migration?
b. What is the
annual pattern of mortality and how does it change from year to year?
c. Mortality detection: Heart-rate
transmitters, temperature sensors, motion detectors
d. What is the importance of weather vs.
other causes?
e. Residents, facultative and obligate
migrants….
f. Interaction of dispersal and migration
g. Annual patterns of mortality require refining distinctions between different phases
of movement (esp. dispersal vs.
migration).
- Fitness—Individual
level
a. What is the relative role of adaptation and constraint in effecting individual patterns and processes of individual movements?
b. What are the effects of age on migratory performance, how long do they last and are there senescence effects?
c. What is the biological basis of individual and age-related differences in performance?
d. How do differences in migration distance and proximity to goal influence migratory tactics?
e. How do individual level changes relate to population mean differences as emergent properties?
f. How do differences in wintering and staging areas and timing influence the timing of migration and return?
g. How do the timing of migration and return relate to fitness differences on the breeding grounds?
h. How do challenges during migration affect timing and fitness? Great opportunity for experiments?
i. What is the optimal quantity of data to be gathered to answer our questions? How much data is too much?
j. Very important to develop articulations with environmental variation at many scales and many data sources.
k. How do we deal with the bioinformatics challenge of doing statistics and inference—radar data as an example, but we need data standards and AI-like data analysis tools.
l. Which of the following variable have the most promise for monitoring state? heart rate, skin temperature, mass or wing-loading…
m. Is hypothermia a part of migrant’s energy management strategy.
(Problem with heart-rate is variation in organ size (hearts get 30% bigger))
These raise the possibility of
really realistic experiments, manipulations of state directly or translocation
to different habitats—looking at how movement responds…
- Evolution
of Migration
- Behavior of birds across migratory divides, within different segments of
heterogeneous populations
- What is the relative role of physiological vs. genetic change in effecting patterns
of movement?
- Mixed ESS’s vs. conditional strategies.
- Within population vs. between population comparisons. Costs and benefits of each.
- Track vagrants or displaced birds.
- Are vagrants more or less vulnerable to parasites, and are parasite densities Cross-validation with Emlen cages.
- Microevolutionary approaches should be emphasized?
- Interactions with the Environment
- How do micrometerological variables (temperature, wind speed and direction) affect flight behavior (including wing-beat, heart-rate).
- In post-migration dispersal, do the rules for straying vs. homing relate to habitat patchiness, stability and predictability as they do in salmon?
- Need to look at Science Dispersal issue from July 2006?
- Can we tag predators to look at the dynamics of predation risk?
- Are birds on edges of ranges more or less likely to move?
- What are the constraints against spatial sampling? What causes so many birds to appear to be satisficers rather than optimizers in patterns of habitat occupation?
- ESS approaches needed to incorporate other birds and their strategies when looking at habitat occupation: How does this affect the correlation between migrant density and inferred habitat quality?
- Are dramatic aggregations at stopping sites most attractive or a bunch of refugees birds? Are they really ecological traps?
- Do they select stop over habitat and do they remain at habitat if deemed unsuitable, i.e. do they move on? How do we define suitability?
GROUP 3
– I have no notes from Group 3!
GROUP 4
- What
environmental factors regulate migratory populations throughout the life
cycle?
- What
is the state of knowledge?
- Links between stages in annual cycle are poorly understood.
-
Ability to track individuals is not
possible for many species.
- What are the cutting edges?
- Technologies to track individuals.
-
Sequencing more of the genome of
different species.
- What
data are needed?
- Year-long data
- Ability to measure threats.
- Meshing physiology and ecology at the individual level.
-
Choosing a model species for each
question.
- What is the role of the network?
- Different people in different places utilizing a variety of techniques.
- Greater standardization across regions.
- Search for funding sources to promote standardization.
- Encourage people to collect novel data.
- Help groups of researchers internationally to get a hold of bands/technologies.
- Develop
international short courses.
- Define
success of the network.
- Knowledge of where different researchers are working.
- Ability to track individuals at smaller spatiotemporal scales.
- Ability to network amongst researchers across a species’ range.
- Student exchanges between regions/countries.
- Develop graduate student short course in opposite years as Alerstam’s European course.
- Collaborative projects created among MIGRATE network members.
- Identification of model species for each different question, which would depend on the question being asked.
- Open lines of communication with public schools.
- Open lines of communication with conservation/management agencies.
- Come
up with novel ways to fund research and education across international
borders.
- Disadvantages
of using a model species approach
- Lose
collaborators through disinterest in that species.
- Bad
model for other species groups.
- Better
way to allocate resources than using a model approach.
Further questions:
E. Kirsch: What stage of the annual cycle is most affected
by anthropogenic change?
R. Norris: What are the extrinsic vs. intrinsic factors
affecting population size (similar to Stuart’s question)?
Group 5
- Population dynamics - would like info equivalent to the kind of info that is available for waterfowl – especially mark-recapture data to calculate lamba and model survivorship, and determine correlates (components?) of survivorship…so be as quantitative as possible. Focus on what are the missing attributes of those models – in the case of landbirds, everything is missing.
- Mortality
and productivity, especially as to landbirds, migration monitoring
stations can provide a great deal of info – there is no network of
migration monitoring stations across the US-Mexico border yet. For
instance, need ratio of adult to first-year captures. Coupled with knowledge of
where the birds are coming from would help to understand population
regulation. Easier than marking entire populations ala Sillett and Holmes.
MAPS stations, coupled with migration monitoring data, we can test ideas about productivity between areas that are producing more birds and are we just capturing more of those?
- Compensatory v. additive mortality can also be studied with these approaches. Modelers will tell us what the limits are of using these data to develop these models.
- Plasticity
– ability of individual to adapt to challenges such as climate
change/anthropogenic change. Can also be considered at species and popn
level. Examples exist of species that do different things in different
parts of the range. Would help understand response of popns to anthropogenic
change. Lab experiments and manipulations, such as displacement, can be
proxies to see how individuals respond to challenges. Recent paper in Auk
by Briskie – commentary on using invasive species as models for island
species (in NZ) and how they recover, so you don’t have to use the
declining, endangered species and how they come through bottlenecks. Cues
for leaving wintering grounds and how it is affected by migration strategy
(e.g., long vs. short distance), and how different individuals make those
choices. Much of this work is being done in
Group 6
A product of all questions could be - How do we conserve
migrants?
- What
question do we answer first with tracking?
a. general questions
- Can we identify the demographic units of migratory animals?
- What is the state and location of an individual during its annual routine?
- What is the
relative role of plasticity and constraints in migration?
- This can be
addressed on different time and space resolutions.
- Pull together the different
pieces of the puzzle at different scales in space and time (immediate –
evolutionary)
b. specific questions
- Identify where and when they are vulnerable during the annual cycle
- How do we keep track of how are populations doing
- Where do we protect migrants
- How variable is their behavior
- How representative are the individuals of the population
- Population information – using other techniques
- Success
for MIGRATE – increasing capacity
a. Educate ourselves – training –
statistics, modeling and database
b. Technological
advances
c. Database
development (e.g., Avian knowledge network – Cornell)
d. Synthesis papers for example –
added value of integrating different research approaches
- What
can we do as a network that we cannot do as individuals?
a. Combining expertise to advance
technology
b. Answer
certain questions
c. Target
taxa
d. Database repositories
- Some
Notes
a. Remote sensing is an important
issue
b. Identify influence of land use
changes
Wrap up (J. Kelly): Everyone will get copy of these notes and the PIs will try to pull together commonalities.
SESSION II: VALUE OF USING MODEL SPECIES: WHAT DOES
THAT MEAN AND WHAT MIGHT THOSE SPECIES BE?
J. Smith: Is there a downside to selecting model species? Is
it a given that we would take that approach?
F. Moore: Presentation – conceptual and logistical issues
Discussion
F. Moore: What are we trying to model?
C. Guglielmo: What
genes are turned on prior to migration to enable the physiological or
behavioral changes that comprise migration – endocrinological changes of the
nonmigrants or close relatives could be studied
D. Winkler: A discussion of genomics is fine but for
migration, we should consider something like obligates v. facultative migrants
and ecologically relevant issues. Fundamentally, it has to be a species that
produces a lot of information.
S. Skagen: Supports model species approach and could develop
examples of wealth of information that could help demonstrate to agencies that
they need to consider other species for funding rather than just the declining
species. By definition, those are not the ones that necessarily need to be
studied. It is better to study the common species so we can understand the
fundamental mechanisms – and focus on basic biology, not the interdisciplinary
approach – the bigger the approach, the less you can do.
K. Hobson: Model species will work, especially where there
is a network. Choose abundant species that are representative of different
strategies (e.g., long vs. short distance), body size. Avoid “indicator species” approach – keep
those shortcomings in mind – they chose the wrong species as indicators e.g., Ovenbird
as old growth species in Canadian forests when it turns out that their habitat
requirements are very broad. If you don’t know a lot about the organism in advance,
you can choose the wrong one. Depending on the question, you may be better off
choosing a community of birds.
R. Norris: Collaborative effort needed. Altruism is needed
and you might not get your choice of model species. Need to pick a species that
everyone can take something from and should be determined by two broad
questions – population dynamics and evolutionary aspects of migration. May need
more than one, e.g., one songbird, one shorebird…to get adequate and applicable
generalities.
S. Gauthreaux: We already have model species, e.g., Red
Knot, where there has been a tremendous amount of work. If we looked for
existing model species, we would find a number of them. We don’t want ALL
research funding going to a small suite of species to the exclusion of research
on questions that are not species-driven. So make list and see how much
agreement there is.
F. Spina: Could be interesting to model systems rather than
species – with wide array of species. Interspecific analysis and comparisons
are really very important to understand general rules and strategies. For
instance, compare migration across
S. Haig: Could we have a model approach rather than a model
species? The issues are more important than studying a few species. Any group
of people could use model species if they wanted to but the focus should be on
the questions.
A. Jahn: From austral perspective, there are many species
that migrate in the opposite direction, so researchers in Southern Hemisphere
need to be included.
J. Shamoun-Baranes: An advantage of model species, if you
have enough information, is to develop a strong model and then test it. The
Western Sandpiper project was chosen because of logistical ease e.g., studying
wintering, breeding, migration stopover sites. But this is a 5-year effort
(MIGRATE) and the question is whether those in the network want to work with
model species, not what others want to do. Having a model species (or several)
may help those in the network to make more progress.
S. Bearhop: Can’t shoehorn every question onto a given model
species. There is value in defining migration systems of interest, e.g.,
limited, discrete stopovers vs. wide choice of stopover sites, or those that
migrate over water vs. over land.
S. Mabey: She has reservations about using species models
because of the extensive variation BUT some of the issues may be well-served by
the model species approach – population dynamics may be studied through models
whereas plasticity and other issues, not as much.
T. Smith: How will we identify species a priori and get people to work on them when everyone has their own interests? The question - is among what collaborators are working on, are there species everyone can agree on? The exception is genomics where having a single species is useful, e.g., species with migratory and nonmigratory populations – and this will lead to approaches for other species.
Migratory systems approach is valuable given international
character of the group but the challenge is to choose the questions that will
be enabled when we can track individual birds.
We can’t all get all the information to understand migration. This group can get at an understanding of only one small part of a question – others will work on other parts – so it may be necessary to choose a species for which there is already good information to maximize chances of getting the understanding you seek
F. Moore: This is part of the attribute of a good model
species – that a certain amount of knowledge is already available that may be
relevant to the conceptual issues of interest.
J. Kelly: In preparing the proposal they looked at the model
species issue. He can see long-term benefit to picking a few species to
emphasize. People are still free to work on whatever they want. Having a lot of
information on a few species may give researchers leverage for their own
research programs – perhaps to extend to comparisons with other species. It
isn’t clear to reviewers why every proposal deals with a different species and
doesn’t build on what has already been done.
Young investigators who are starting to shape their research
programs may want to choose the model or focal species identified by a group
like this RCN.
R. Diehl: Do we know enough to choose model species
intelligently? We know a lot about some and a little about most. That they have
received a lot of attention doesn’t mean that they are good models, even if we
benefit from all that knowledge. But we don’t know enough to choose across a spectrum.
If this group endorses a model or set of models, it will foster interest among
new grad students and young faculty and provide strong leverage for funding for
those species.
D. Winkler: When you start replicating research, you find
that there are differences across the species’ range so it really helps to know
limits of generalizations and to identify variability.
R. Norris: This doesn’t dictate that everyone work on the
models and give up their own interests. This is in addition to what everyone
else is doing. Without models, we can’t really understand movement, population
dynamics, causes of migration if all working independently and without model
species. Look at it as a group proposal. When someone works on one species,
others tend to think “that’s their turf” and some avoid working on what others
are working on. Advantage of coming together is in part to get past that
turfiness issue and work collaboratively.
Potential model species
– discussion of attributes
Speaker?:
These are just suggestions and were chosen because we know something about
migration for these species and we might be able to get more knowledge about
migration if we study these. The idea is to complete a matrix (see separate
Xcel spreadsheet) for each of the suggested species, as to whether enough is
known or not for each attribute.
Attributes
Distance
Life history
Geographical distribution
Size/mass – ability to mark
Ability to track
Adequate population size
Catachability
Hold in captivity?
Breed in captivity
Polytypic variation
ageing and sexing potential
nocturnal/diurnal
differential migration among facultative species
facultative v. obligate
do we know the phylogeny
conservation concern/potential for funding
international aspects
north-south vs. other
over water via over land
flight strategy – soaring vs. active
Pattern and processes
Isotope work
Genetic markers
Population modeling
Orientation
Stopover biology
Breeding biology
wintering biology
molt
connectivity
good for genomics
good for population dynamics
good for evolution questions
Where are there blanks in the matrix
Are these all the considerations we need to think about?
This matrix helps to determine if we know enough about a
given species to consider it as a model – no point in choosing something we don’t
know much about – all that are on list meet the standards but there are others
that probably qualify
Added species: Black-throated Blue Warbler, White-crowned
Sparrow, Osprey, Sandhill Crane
Realistically the model has to be limited to one species so
some of these attributes may be more important than others – or the species
that meets more of the criteria than others
Some species on the list are more appropriate for population
dynamics and others for evolution of migration
S. Mabey: This is just a tool for identifying candidates and
narrowing down the list of candidates. For comparative studies, life history
strategies are important, so you might need two – one for comparison to the
model species.
J. Smith: The most important attribute(s) may depend on the
specific question you are asking.
Is it more important to have taxa that are species rich – if
you want to look at microevolutionary questions?
Added: Peregrine Falcon and Osprey - both found in
Does tracking mean through space/time OR through
observations at banding stations – and it has to be year-round tracking but
tracking on wintering grounds is very difficult
Have to score, can’t use yes/no measures for each attribute
K. Hobson: Can just do +/- in each box in the green attributes
boxes.
F. Moore: Some that will be both e.g., nocturnal and diurnal. Life history is hard to score and we might need subcategories – life span, first age of reproduction.
Speaker?:
We can send this out to colleagues for additional feedback.
Speaker?:
Would be very hard to send out, get people to respond, analyze answers – can
just test it through subgroup comparisons w/ the participants here to be sure
they know what the categories mean
K. Hobson: What other species are similar to those we do know about so we can do comparisons? That is also important. He’d rather do comparisons OR start using the info we have to start answering questions. More important question is what are the limits of techniques – e.g., stable isotopes are only good for latitudinal migrants. And also if someone else is doing a lot of work on a species, and is likely to continue doing so, why not start elsewhere? More interesting question is how similar other species are? Do we need to know more about Snow Geese or