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Research article2023Peer reviewedOpen access

Co-migration fidelity at a stopover site increases over time in African–European migratory landbirds

Bellisario, Bruno; Cardinale, Massimiliano; Maggini, Ivan; Fusani, Leonida; Carere, Claudio

Abstract

Migratory species are changing their timing of departure from wintering areas and arrival to breeding sites (i.e. migration phenology) in response to climate change to exploit maximum food availability at higher latitudes and improve their fitness. Despite the impact of changing migration phenology at population and community level, the extent to which individual and species-specific response affects associations among co-migrating species has been seldom explored. By applying temporal co-occurrence network models on 15 years of standardized bird ringing data at a spring stopover site, we show that African–European migratory landbirds tend to migrate in well-defined groups of species with high temporal overlap. Such ‘co-migration fidelity’ significantly increased over the years and was higher in long-distance (trans-Saharan) than in short-distance (North African) migrants. Our findings suggest non-random patterns of associations in co-migrating species, possibly related to the existence of regulatory mechanisms associated with changing climate conditions and different uses of stopover sites, ultimately influencing the global economy of migration of landbirds in the Palearctic–African migration system.

Keywords

stopover; co-occurrence networks; migration phenology; avian assemblages; interspecific interactions

Published in

Royal Society Open Science
2023, Volume: 10, number: 8, article number: 221043