Automated radio tracking system for avian studies

鸟类是高度移动的动物，但也许令人惊讶的是，同一物种的不同个体在其生命周期的不同阶段的移动程度有很大差异，即它们飞行的距离有多远。例如，在繁殖期间，鸟类在喂雏鸟时被绑在鸟巢的位置。然而，有些鸟每天只飞行几百米（相当于步行到街角的商店）就能为雏鸟找到食物，而另一些鸟每天飞行20公里（几乎是半程马拉松）。另一方面，候鸟将在北极的繁殖地和更南方的越冬地之间飞行几千公里。但在这里，一些个体通常比同一物种的其他个体多旅行数百公里。对于个体在“流动性”上的差异所带来的后果——在繁殖、迁徙或越冬期间长途跋涉是否有成本，或者这是否真的给个体带来了好处——我们仍然只有非常基本的理解，但由于最近的技术进步，比如自动无线电跟踪系统，我们现在有了更大的能力来跟踪大量的个体，并回答这些问题。在此，我们要求为一个自动无线电跟踪系统提供资金，该系统带有数字编码的无线电发射器，能够同时跟踪数百只鸟并记录超过25万条记录。这将使我们能够获得鸟类移动模式变化的详细信息，以及这种变化在三种不同系统中的后果：a)在农业栖息地的欧洲椋鸟（Sturnus vulgaris）的亲代抚育期间，这是一种日益受到关注的农业害虫物种；b)太平洋雀（Calidris alpina），这是一种日益受到保护的物种，从阿拉斯加向南迁徙到不列颠哥伦比亚省的中途停留点；c)黄莺（Setophaga petechia），一种新热带候鸟，在墨西哥的自然和改造栖息地越冬。

Birds are highly mobile animals but, perhaps surprisingly, there is a large amount of variation in just how mobile different individuals of the same species are, i.e. how far they travel, during different stages of their life cycles. For example, during breeding birds are tied to a nest location while they feed their chicks. However, some birds manage to find food for their chicks by travelling and foraging over only a few hundred meters each day (equivalent to a walk to the corner store) whereas others fly up to 20 km a day (almost a half marathon). At the other end of the spectrum, migratory birds will travel several thousand kilometers between their breeding grounds in the Arctic and wintering grounds further south. But here, some individuals often travel many hundreds of kilometers further than other individuals of the same species. We still have only a very rudimentary understanding of the consequences of this individual variation in 'mobility' - are there costs to traveling greater distances during breeding, migration or on the wintering grounds, or does this actually bring benefits to individuals - but due to recent technological advances, such as automated radio tracking systems, we now have a much greater ability to follow large numbers of individuals and answer these questions. Here we are requesting funding for an automated radio tracking system with digitally-coded radio transmitters capable of following several hundred individual birds at one time and logging over 250,000 records. This will allow us to obtain detailed information on variation in mobility patterns of birds, and the consequences of this variation, in three different systems: a) during parental care in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in agricultural habitats, a species of increasing concern as an agricultural pest, b) in Pacific Dunlins (Calidris alpina), a species of increasing conservation concern, during southward migration from Alaska to stop-over sites in British Columbia, and c) in yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia), a neotropical migrant that overwinters in natural and modified habitat in Mexico.