Where do winter crows go? Characterizing partial migration of American Crows with satellite telemetry, stable isotopes, and molecular markers

摘要

Partial migration—a strategy in which some individuals are resident and others are migratory within the same population—is widespread among avian species and could play an important transitional role in the evolution of migratory behavior. Nevertheless, detailed movement data are unavailable for most partial migrant species. We examined migration strategies of the American Crow ( Corvus brachyrhynchos ), a partially migratory species that overwinters in large communal roosts, from which some birds migrate north to breed. We used a combination of satellite telemetry, isotopic signatures (δsup2/supH), and molecular markers (33 microsatellites) to describe and characterize the migratory movements of individuals from overwintering roosts on the east coast (Utica, New York) and west coast (Davis, California) of the United States. We collected 11,951 data points from 18 satellite-tagged individuals between 2014 and 2018, among which 14 (77.8%) were migratory (8 of 11 and 6 of 7 birds on the west and east coasts, respectively). Migration distances were 280–1,095 km and 177–793 km on the west and east coasts, respectively. Individual birds were consistent in their migratory behavior across years, and breeding-site fidelity was high: both migratory and resident birds returned to the same location in the breeding season of each year. Both isotopic signatures and molecular markers could generally differentiate residents from long-distance migrants (i.e. those breeding at latitudes 3.5°N of the resident populations), but they did not consistently differentiate residents from migrants with shorter migration distances. Overall, these data on the migratory movements of American Crows and the proportion of migrants in their roosts can serve as a baseline against which to test predictions about how partial migrants will respond to environmental alterations such as climate change and urbanization.