Movement ecology of songbirds during migratory periods

候鸟每年在越冬和繁殖区之间进行长距离迁徙。在这些迁徙过程中，它们必须在通常不熟悉的地方停留，以便休息和为随后的飞行补充燃料。这些中转期对个体的生活史很重要，因为每年死亡的相当大一部分可能发生在这段时间，所做的选择可能会影响随后的生存或繁殖成功。由于许多雀形目鸟类的体型很小(它们很难在空间和时间上进行追踪)，人们对这些行为在所需的规模上知之甚少。我的实验室开发了一个自动甚高频遥测系统(motus.org)，可以用来追踪小型雀形目鸟类。在以前的工作中，我们已经表明，在中途停留期间，在秋季迁徙期间，个体可能会在景观上移动相当远的距离。在这里，我们建议将我们关于中途停留的工作延长到春季(通过在越冬地标记鸟类)，在越冬期间启动额外的人口统计学研究，并通过实验测试关于秋季区域尺度运动功能的两个假说。研究结果将有助于阐明这些运动的功能，并提供对其人口统计学后果的洞察。

Migratory birds undertake long-distance movements yearly between over-wintering and breeding areas. During these migrations they must stopover in often unfamiliar landscapes to rest and refuel for subsequent flights. These stopover periods are important to the life history of the individuals since a considerable portion of yearly mortality likely occurs during them, and choices made may influence subsequent survival or breeding success. Because of the small size of many passerine birds (they are difficult to track through space and time), there is little known about these behaviours at the scales required. My lab has developed an automated system of VHF telemetry (motus.org) that can be used to track small passerine birds. In previous work we have shown that during stopover, individuals may move considerable distances over landscapes during the fall migratory period. Here, we propose to extend our work on stopover to the spring period (by marking birds on the wintering grounds), to initiate additional demographic studies during the overwintering period, and to experimentally test two hypotheses regarding the function of regional-scale movements in fall. The results will help elucidate the function of these movements, and provide insight into their demographic consequences.