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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Monarch Butterfly (Danaus Plexippus) Roost Site-Selection And Viability East Of The Appalachian Mountains, Brandon Boxler
Monarch Butterfly (Danaus Plexippus) Roost Site-Selection And Viability East Of The Appalachian Mountains, Brandon Boxler
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Monarch butterfly is a flagship species and pollinator whose populations have declined by approximately 85% in the last two decades. Their largest population overwinters in Mexico, then disperses across the eastern United States and Canada during April to August. Between September-December, the butterflies return south using two migratory flyways, one spanning the central United States and another following the Atlantic coast. They fly during the day and at night roost in large groups. Roosting habitat is essential to the continuation of the Monarchs’ migration, however, threats such as anthropogenic habitat disturbance and climate change potentially endanger sustainability of these …
Assessing Lipid Content In Migrating Alewife, Anthony Zenga
Assessing Lipid Content In Migrating Alewife, Anthony Zenga
Honors College
Alewife are a commercially, economically, and ecologically important fish, that expend large amounts of energy during their long migrations to spawning habitat. This energy demand can influence an individual’s chances of surviving and reproducing successfully. To understand how energy use may affect fitness, we captured alewife from the Souadabscook Stream over the course of their spawning migration. Fifty fish were sampled each week from May 12th to June 10th 2019. The lipid content of each individual was measured by using i) a Distell Fatmeter and ii) gravimetric analysis by measuring muscle moisture as an indirect method to assess lipid content. …
American Woodcock Migration Ecology At An Important Stopover, Cape May, New Jersey, Brian B. Allen
American Woodcock Migration Ecology At An Important Stopover, Cape May, New Jersey, Brian B. Allen
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Migration poses risks and energetic demands to individuals that may be greater than those experienced during non-migratory periods. Most migratory birds require stopover sites to rest and recuperate energy spent during migratory flights, and stopover locations can alleviate risks and provide supplemental energy en route to the animal’s end destination. An individual’s stopover duration is contingent first on energy acquisition that is constrained by resource availability, and secondarily on environmental conditions such as weather that may facilitate or constrain continued migration. From 2010 to 2013 I conducted a radio-telemetry study of a short-distance migrant, the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), on …
Behavioral Ecology Of Landbird Migrants In A Complex And Changing Flyway System: The Gulf Of Maine, Adrienne J. Leppold
Behavioral Ecology Of Landbird Migrants In A Complex And Changing Flyway System: The Gulf Of Maine, Adrienne J. Leppold
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In and around the Gulf of Maine, over 300 species of birds have been documented during migration, and tens of millions of songbirds may pass through the region on a single autumn night. Shorelines are widely documented as major migration corridors. There is ample evidence that coastal areas concentrate migrants and many species make overwater movements to and from breeding and wintering grounds. Data collected from radar, banding, and ceilometry studies in the northeast have provided us with evidence that birds migrate along the coast and make overwater movements across the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy during both …
Explaining Migratory Behaviors Using Optimal Migration Theory, Jennifer D. Mccabe
Explaining Migratory Behaviors Using Optimal Migration Theory, Jennifer D. Mccabe
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Bird migration is the regular seasonal movements between breeding and nonbreeding grounds. In general, birds that breed in the Northern Hemisphere tend to migrate northward in the spring to take advantage of increasing insect populations and lower predation pressures and fly south when food availability and weather conditions decline. Embarking on a journey that can stretch a thousand miles round trip is a dangerous and arduous undertaking. While en route migrants must stop and feed to replenish their depleted energy reserves, often in unfamiliar locations with unknown predation pressures. They also must react to weather conditions during flight and while …
Using Migration Monitoring Data To Assess Bird Population Status And Behavior In A Changing Environment, Evan M. Adams
Using Migration Monitoring Data To Assess Bird Population Status And Behavior In A Changing Environment, Evan M. Adams
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Across the world, researchers use migration banding stations to document bird migration and study the phenomenon. In this dissertation, I focus on ways of analyzing bird migration banding data and the utility migrating birds as indicators of ecosystem health that make these monitoring efforts more useful to answering ecological questions and managing migratory species. In Chapter 1, we provide background on hierarchical modeling and an overview of our findings. In Chapter 2, we developed and validated new methods to estimate daily changes in migratory population size while controlling for changes in detectability due to environmental conditions. In Chapter 3, this …
Using Passive Acoustic Monitoring To Determine Temporal Patters And Mixed Species Flocking Associations Of Migrating North American Warblers In The Gulf Of Maine, David Bridges
Honors College
Recent development of plans for offshore and land-based wind energy projects has created the need for a better understanding of migration in the Gulf of Maine region, an important flyway for countless migrant birds each year. To better understand migration in this region, the University of Maine’s Lab of Avian Biology, working in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, deployed acoustic recording units at various sites throughout the Gulf of Maine to detect and quantify flight calls of nocturnally migrating songbirds. Using these data from selected nights, the detected flight call temporal patterns of American Redstarts (Setophaga ruticilla), …