Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar (CESAM), Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal.
Departamento de Anatomía, Biología Celular y Zoología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2024 Feb 28;14(1):4884. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-55501-y.
Migratory shorebird populations are declining worldwide, showing an apparent inability to respond to the interplaying challenges emerging along their flyways. Within the East Atlantic Flyway, non-breeding populations show moderate to strong declines in Sub-Saharan Africa, contrasting with stable or increasing trends in Europe. Local factors are insufficient to explain the opposite tendencies and, therefore, investigating migratory strategies and connectivity of these populations may help identifying the drivers of their demography. We followed the migratory journeys of 20 grey plovers (Pluvialis squatarola) from their wintering grounds in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa), Portugal and France (Europe) using tracking devices. Grey plovers wintering in Africa and Europe were found to share breeding grounds at European Russia and Western Siberia, revealing low migratory connectivity in the Eastern Atlantic population. All individuals followed a "skipping" migratory strategy, flying mostly mid-distance bouts, and using an unexpected large network of stopover sites to re-fuel usually for short periods. We identified 66 different stopover sites along the West African, European and Russian/Siberian coasts. All birds stopped at the Wadden Sea in both migratory periods, highlighting the importance of this region and the risk for a potential bottleneck. Low migratory connectivity and similar migratory strategies shared by grey plovers wintering in Europe and West Africa do not support their contrasting population trends.
迁徙性滨鸟种群在全球范围内正在减少，它们显然无法应对在迁徙路线上出现的相互作用的挑战。在东大西洋迁徙路线上，撒哈拉以南非洲地区的非繁殖种群呈中度至强烈下降趋势，而欧洲地区的种群则呈稳定或增加趋势。当地因素不足以解释相反的趋势，因此，研究这些种群的迁徙策略和连通性可能有助于确定其种群动态的驱动因素。我们使用追踪装置跟踪了 20 只灰斑鸻（Pluvialis squatarola）从其在几内亚比绍（西非）、葡萄牙和法国（欧洲）的越冬地的迁徙路线。在非洲和欧洲越冬的灰斑鸻被发现共享俄罗斯欧洲部分和西西伯利亚的繁殖地，这表明东大西洋种群的迁徙连通性较低。所有个体都采用了“跳跃”的迁徙策略，主要进行中距离飞行，并利用一个意想不到的大型中途停留点网络来加油，通常停留时间很短。我们在西非、欧洲和俄罗斯/西伯利亚海岸沿线确定了 66 个不同的中途停留点。所有鸟类在两个迁徙期都在瓦登海停留，这突出了该地区的重要性以及潜在瓶颈的风险。在欧洲和西非越冬的灰斑鸻的迁徙连通性较低，且迁徙策略相似，这与它们种群趋势的对比不符。
