Southern breeding populations drive declining migration distances in Arctic and subarctic geese

Abstract

Migration is a prevalent strategy among birds used to track seasonal resources throughout the year. Individual and population‐level migratory movements provide insight to life‐history variation, carry‐over effects, and impacts of climate change. Our understanding of how geographic variation in a species' breeding or wintering grounds can impact migration distances is limited. However, changes in migration distances can have important fitness consequences for individuals and conservation implications for populations, particularly if migratory connectivity is altered during the annual cycle. In this study, we use three decades of data from the United States Geological Survey Bird Banding Laboratory for six migratory species of Arctic and subarctic breeding geese. We employ a Bayesian hierarchical framework to test if the distance between breeding and wintering locations has changed over time, while accounting for the latitude of the breeding grounds. A model that included only a temporal trend estimated the average rate of change in migration distance, across all six species, at −3.0 km/year over the period 1990–2019. Five of the six species showed a significant decrease in migration distances. Including an interaction effect with breeding latitude revealed that the reduction in migration distance was strongest in the southernmost populations for four of the six species. For those species, migration distance in northern populations were all either relatively unchanged or increasing. This indicates that southern breeding populations of geese had a stronger association with the observed spatiotemporal changes in wintering ranges, potentially influenced by a combination of climatic and biotic factors (e.g. resource availability or competitive interactions) that uniquely impact these populations. Abundant, long‐term banding data shows promise for use in illuminating changes in migratory patterns under climate change, leading to improved management and conservation outcomes, from regional to continental scales.