A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa
BACKGROUND: As a widely distributed and aerial migratory bird, the Common Swift (Apus apus) flies over a wide geographic range in Eurasia and Africa during migration. Although some studies have revealed the migration routes and phenology of European populations, A. a. apus (from hereon the nominate...
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BioMed Central
2022
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Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245314/ https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 |
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9245314 |
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PubMed Central (PMC) |
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English |
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Research Zhao, Yanyan Zhao, Xinru Wu, Lan Mu, Tong Yu, Fang Kearsley, Lyndon Liang, Xuan Fu, Jianping Hou, Xiaoru Peng, Peng Li, Xiaoyang Zhang, Tao Yan, Su Newell, Dick Hewson, Chris M. Townshend, Terry Åkesson, Susanne Liu, Yang A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
topic_facet |
Research |
description |
BACKGROUND: As a widely distributed and aerial migratory bird, the Common Swift (Apus apus) flies over a wide geographic range in Eurasia and Africa during migration. Although some studies have revealed the migration routes and phenology of European populations, A. a. apus (from hereon the nominate apus), the route used by its East Asian counterpart A. a. pekinensis (from hereon pekinensis) remained a mystery. METHODS: Using light level geolocators, we studied the migration of adult pekinensis breeding in Beijing from 2014 to 2018, and analysed full annual tracks obtained from 25 individuals. In addition, we used the mean monthly precipitation to assess the seasonal variations in humidity for the distribution ranges of the nominate apus and pekinensis. This environmental variable is considered to be critically relevant to their migratory phenology and food resource abundance. RESULTS: Our results show that the swifts perform a round-trip journey of ca 30,000 km each year, representing a detour of 26% in autumn and 15% in spring compared to the shortest route between the breeding site in Beijing and wintering areas in semi-arid south-western Africa. Compared to the nominate apus, pekinensis experiences drier conditions for longer periods of time. Remarkably, individuals from our study population tracked arid habitat along the entire migration corridor leading from a breeding site in Beijing to at least central Africa. In Africa, they explored more arid habitats during non-breeding than the nominate apus. CONCLUSIONS: The migration route followed by pekinensis breeding in Beijing might suggest an adaptation to semi-arid habitat and dry climatic zones during non-breeding periods, and provides a piece of correlative evidence indicating the historical range expansion of the subspecies. This study highlights that the Common Swift may prove invaluable as a model species for studies of migration route formation and population divergence. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Zhao, Yanyan Zhao, Xinru Wu, Lan Mu, Tong Yu, Fang Kearsley, Lyndon Liang, Xuan Fu, Jianping Hou, Xiaoru Peng, Peng Li, Xiaoyang Zhang, Tao Yan, Su Newell, Dick Hewson, Chris M. Townshend, Terry Åkesson, Susanne Liu, Yang |
author_facet |
Zhao, Yanyan Zhao, Xinru Wu, Lan Mu, Tong Yu, Fang Kearsley, Lyndon Liang, Xuan Fu, Jianping Hou, Xiaoru Peng, Peng Li, Xiaoyang Zhang, Tao Yan, Su Newell, Dick Hewson, Chris M. Townshend, Terry Åkesson, Susanne Liu, Yang |
author_sort |
Zhao, Yanyan |
title |
A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
title_short |
A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
title_full |
A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
title_fullStr |
A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
title_full_unstemmed |
A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa |
title_sort |
30,000-km journey by apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern china and south-western africa |
publisher |
BioMed Central |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245314/ https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-63.913,-63.913,-65.021,-65.021) |
geographic |
Detour |
geographic_facet |
Detour |
genre |
Apus apus |
genre_facet |
Apus apus |
op_source |
Mov Ecol |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245314/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC0 PDM CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 |
container_title |
Movement Ecology |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
1 |
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1766289129419571200 |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9245314 2023-05-15T14:17:14+02:00 A 30,000-km journey by Apus apus pekinensis tracks arid lands between northern China and south-western Africa Zhao, Yanyan Zhao, Xinru Wu, Lan Mu, Tong Yu, Fang Kearsley, Lyndon Liang, Xuan Fu, Jianping Hou, Xiaoru Peng, Peng Li, Xiaoyang Zhang, Tao Yan, Su Newell, Dick Hewson, Chris M. Townshend, Terry Åkesson, Susanne Liu, Yang 2022-06-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245314/ https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 en eng BioMed Central http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245314/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. CC0 PDM CC-BY Mov Ecol Research Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00329-2 2022-07-03T01:10:57Z BACKGROUND: As a widely distributed and aerial migratory bird, the Common Swift (Apus apus) flies over a wide geographic range in Eurasia and Africa during migration. Although some studies have revealed the migration routes and phenology of European populations, A. a. apus (from hereon the nominate apus), the route used by its East Asian counterpart A. a. pekinensis (from hereon pekinensis) remained a mystery. METHODS: Using light level geolocators, we studied the migration of adult pekinensis breeding in Beijing from 2014 to 2018, and analysed full annual tracks obtained from 25 individuals. In addition, we used the mean monthly precipitation to assess the seasonal variations in humidity for the distribution ranges of the nominate apus and pekinensis. This environmental variable is considered to be critically relevant to their migratory phenology and food resource abundance. RESULTS: Our results show that the swifts perform a round-trip journey of ca 30,000 km each year, representing a detour of 26% in autumn and 15% in spring compared to the shortest route between the breeding site in Beijing and wintering areas in semi-arid south-western Africa. Compared to the nominate apus, pekinensis experiences drier conditions for longer periods of time. Remarkably, individuals from our study population tracked arid habitat along the entire migration corridor leading from a breeding site in Beijing to at least central Africa. In Africa, they explored more arid habitats during non-breeding than the nominate apus. CONCLUSIONS: The migration route followed by pekinensis breeding in Beijing might suggest an adaptation to semi-arid habitat and dry climatic zones during non-breeding periods, and provides a piece of correlative evidence indicating the historical range expansion of the subspecies. This study highlights that the Common Swift may prove invaluable as a model species for studies of migration route formation and population divergence. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material ... Text Apus apus PubMed Central (PMC) Detour ENVELOPE(-63.913,-63.913,-65.021,-65.021) Movement Ecology 10 1 |