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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Life Sciences

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Series

2022

Waterbirds

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Seasonal Habitat Selection By American White Pelicans, Frederick L. Cunningham, Guiming Wang, D. Tommy King Sep 2022

Seasonal Habitat Selection By American White Pelicans, Frederick L. Cunningham, Guiming Wang, D. Tommy King

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Resource utilization strategies of avian migrants are a major concern for conservation and management. Understanding seasonal habitat selection by migratory birds helps us explain the ongoing continental declines of migratory bird populations. Our objective was to compare the secondorder and third-order habitat selection by the American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos; hereafter pelican) between the breeding and non-breeding grounds. We tested the Lack hypothesis that habitat selection by migratory birds is stronger on the breeding grounds than on the nonbreeding grounds. We used random-effect Dirichlet-multinomial models to estimate the second-order habitat selection between the seasons with the GPS locations …


Seasonal Variation And Tracking Of Climate Niche Of A Migratory Bird, Javier Gutiérrez Illán, Guiming Wang, D. Tommy King, Fred L. Cunningham May 2022

Seasonal Variation And Tracking Of Climate Niche Of A Migratory Bird, Javier Gutiérrez Illán, Guiming Wang, D. Tommy King, Fred L. Cunningham

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Migratory birds inhabit different areas during breeding and non-breeding seasons. Depending on the time of the year, they may utilize different resources available in seasonal habitats, but also are subjected to changing climate regimes during their annual life cycle. Migratory birds may adopt ecological niche tracking to cope with different environmental conditions between breeding and non-breeding grounds. The American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, hereafter ‘AWPE’) is a short-distance migrant between the Gulf of Mexico coastal regions (nonbreeding grounds) and the Northern Great Plains (breeding grounds) of Canada and the US. The American White Pelican is a piscivore, feeding …