Scaling migrations to communities: An empirical case of migration network in the Arctic

• Published in: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
• Main Authors: Moisan, Louis, Gravel, Dominique, Legagneux, Pierre, Gauthier, Gilles, Léandri-Breton, Don-Jean, Somveille, Marius, Therrien, Jean-François, Lamarre, Jean-François, Bêty, Joël
• Other Authors: Université Laval Québec (ULaval), Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 (CEBC), La Rochelle Université (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: seasonal migration meta-community meta-ecosystem migratory pathways community migration network ecological network bipartite network Arctic; seasonal migration; meta-community; meta-ecosystem; migratory pathways; community migration network; ecological network; bipartite network; Arctic; [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Bylot Island
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04134497; https://hal.science/hal-04134497v1/document; https://hal.science/hal-04134497v1/file/MFEE10_2023.pdf; https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.1077260

International audience Seasonal migrants transport energy, nutrients, contaminants, parasites and diseases, while also connecting distant food webs between communities and ecosystems, which contributes to structuring meta-communities and meta-ecosystems. However, we currently lack a framework to characterize the structure of the spatial connections maintained by all migratory species reproducing or wintering in a given community. Here, we use a network approach to represent and characterize migratory pathways at the community level and provide an empirical description of this pattern from a High-Arctic terrestrial community. We define community migration networks as multipartite networks representing different biogeographic regions connected with a focal community through the seasonal movements of its migratory species. We focus on the Bylot Island High-Arctic terrestrial community, a summer breeding ground for several migratory species. We define the nonbreeding range of each species using tracking devices, or range maps refined by flyways and habitat types. We show that the migratory species breeding on Bylot Island are found across hundreds of ecoregions on several continents during the non-breeding period and present a low spatial overlap. The migratory species are divided into groups associated with different sets of ecoregions. The non-random structure observed in our empirical community migration network suggests evolutionary and geographic constraints as well TYPE