Use of stable isotope fingerprints to assign wintering originand trace shorebird movements along the East AtlanticFlyway

• Published in: Basic and Applied Ecology
• Main Authors: Catry, Teresa, Lourenço, Pedro, Lopes, Ricardo, Bocher, Pierrick, Carneiro, Camilo, Alves, José, Delaporte, Philippe, Bearhop, Stuart, Piersma, Theunis, Granadeiro, José Pedro
• Other Authors: Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar (CESAM), Universidade de Lisboa = University of Lisbon (ULISBOA), LIttoral ENvironnement et Sociétés - UMR 7266 (LIENSs), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-La Rochelle Université (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Exeter, Animal Ecology Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies (CEES), University of Groningen Groningen, Department of Marine Ecology, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), This study was supported byFundac¸ão para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), throughProject “Invisible Links” (PTDC/MAR/119920/2010) andstrategic project UID/AMB/50017/2013. The following post-doctoral grants were supported by POPH/QREN/FSE fundsand by the FCT: TC (SFRH/BPD/102255/2014), PML(SFRH/BPD/84237/2012), RJL (SFRH/BPD/40786/2007,SFRH/BPD/84141/2012) and JAA (SFRH/BPD/91527/2012). TP’s contribution was supported by operational grantsfrom Royal NIOZ and NWO-ALW TOP grant ‘Shorebirds inspace’ (854.11.004).
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2016
• Subjects: Migratory connectivity; Stable isotopes; Stopover sites; Discriminant analysis; Toenails; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; Calidris alpina; Charadrius hiaticula
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-01460634; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2015.10.005

International audience 2015AbstractMigratory connectivity can be defined as the flux of individuals or populations among areas between stages of an animal’s lifecycle. Many shorebird species perform long-distance migrations and while moving between breeding and wintering grounds,they depend on a network of intermediate wetlands (stopover sites) where populations of different origins extensively overlap.The difficulty to discriminate such populations represents a serious obstacle to the identification of the links between breedingor wintering areas and stopover sites, and also precludes the estimation of demographic parameters for each population. In thisstudy, we test if linear discriminant models based on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in toenails can be used to identifypopulations of several shorebird species of different wintering origins overlapping at two stopover sites of the East AtlanticFlyway. In addition, we evaluate the ability of this approach to infer migratory phenological patterns of shorebirds. Lineardiscriminant analyses performed overall well in distinguishing the isotopic signals of birds from wintering areas (in France,Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau) in most species, correctly classifying over 80% (n = 542) of all wintering individuals sampled at these areas. Assignment rates of shorebirds captured during spring migration were also high (96%,n = 323) at the Tejo estuary, Portugal, but lower (40%, n = 185) at Marennes-Oléron Bay in France, and also differed amongspecies. A large proportion of spring migrants captured in Portugal and France were assigned to Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania,the most important wintering area in the flyway. Phenological patterns derived for dunlins (Calidris alpina), common ringedplovers (Charadrius hiaticula) and grey plovers (Pluvialis squatarola) suggest that the first northward migrants started arrivingat the Tejo estuary during the second half of March, with peaking numbers occurring during April or May.