1. Mismatch between diurnal home ranges and roosting areas in the Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina): Possible role of habitat and breeding stage
- Author
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Chris J. Smith, Christina P. Varian, Matthias Leu, and Vitek Jirinec
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,biology ,Ecology ,Home range ,Vegetation ,biology.organism_classification ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Passerine ,010605 ornithology ,Nest ,Habitat ,biology.animal ,Wood thrush ,Seasonal breeder ,Random points ,Animal Science and Zoology ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics - Abstract
The behavior of roosting birds has received little attention from ornithologists, despite its importance for understanding the complete avian circadian cycle. We examined the spatial arrangement of roosts in relation to diurnal home ranges for the declining Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) on its breeding grounds in coastal Virginia, USA. To our knowledge, this is the first broad description of roosting ecology for a North American migratory passerine during the breeding season. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether roost sites and diurnal use areas overlapped. Secondly, using LiDAR, we tested the hypothesis that birds roosted at sites with higher local vegetation density than random points. Lastly, we explored the effect of nest status on the roosting patterns of pairs. We tracked 37 radio-tagged males to construct 95% kernel diurnal home ranges. In 10 home ranges we also tagged the female mates. Both sexes were tracked at night to roosting locations. Of 74 male roosts, ...
- Published
- 2016
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