Data from: Hypotheses and tracking results about the longest migration: the case of the arctic tern ...

• Main Authors: Alerstam, Thomas, Bäckman, Johan, Grönroos, Johanna, Olofsson, Patrik, Strandberg, Roine
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2019
• Subjects: global migration; Arctic tern; population segregation; Sterna paradisaea; bird migration; Antarctic; Arctic; Greenland; Indian; The Antarctic; Antarc*; North Atlantic; Sea ice; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d6080nt; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.d6080nt

The arctic tern Sterna paradisaea completes the longest known annual return migration on Earth, travelling between breeding sites in the northern arctic and temperate regions and survival/moult areas in the Antarctic pack ice zone. Salomonsen (1967) put forward a hypothetical comprehensive interpretation of this global migration pattern, suggesting food distribution, wind patterns, sea ice distribution and moult habits as key ecological and evolutionary determinants. We used light-level geolocators to record twelve annual journeys by eight individuals of arctic terns breeding in the Baltic Sea. Migration cycles were evaluated in the light of Salomonsen’s hypotheses and compared with results from geolocator studies of arctic tern populations from Greenland, Netherlands and Alaska. The Baltic terns completed a 50,000 km annual migration circuit, exploiting ocean regions of high productivity in the North Atlantic, Benguela Current and the Indian Ocean between southern Africa and Australia (sometimes including ... : Arctic_Tern_locationsLocation data from Arctic terns, calculated from light level geolocation data. Data from one individual bird per tab. Locations calculated by using IntiProc software (Migrate Technology Ltd).Light level raw dataLight level data from geolocators. ZIP archive, with files from each individual bird. Naming of files corresponds to designation in Table 1. Data files are to be processed by IntiProc software (Migrate Technology Ltd)Light-level-raw-data.zip ...