Long-distance migrant birds had weaker first-arrival responses to local spring temperature than short-distance migrants at 114 sites west of 60° E, 1961–2018, but not at 12 sites east of 60° E
Question: do long-distance migrant birds change their spring first-arrival date less with local temperature than short-distance migrants? We used the Chronicles of Nature Calendar v1.0.5 (protected areas in Russia and nearby countries) and CRU TS v4.10 temperature. We made 557 site-by-species first-arrival series (at least 15 years over at least 20 years in 1961–2018; 100 species, 126 sites). A literature table (Storchová & Hořák 2018) gave 45 long-distance and 55 short-distance species. For each series we calculated the slope of arrival day on the mean temperature of the 60 days before mean arrival, and the arrival trend. Short-distance migrants arrived 1.0 day earlier per 1 °C; long-distance migrants arrived 0.4 days earlier. In a mixed model with crossed species and site intercepts, the long-minus-short difference was +0.48 days/°C (95% CI 0.25–0.70) and +0.37 (0.07–0.67; site bootstrap 0.02–0.75) after adjustment for arrival date and latitude. Among species with the same mean arrival period (20 April–10 May), the difference was +0.83 (0.35–1.41). The difference came from the 114 sites west of 60° E (+0.80, 0.45–1.16). At 12 sites east of 60° E it was −0.16 (−0.61 to 0.29). A GBIF winter-latitude classification gave the same geographic pattern. Short-distance migrants became earlier by 1.0 day/decade, but long-distance migrants did not (+0.14). Local warming of 0.42 °C/decade predicted only −0.18 days/decade. This trend difference was less robust (adjusted +0.80 days/decade, Wald CI −0.01 to 1.61). Main limitations: first-arrival dates depend on population size and observer effort, which the data do not record; migration classes are coarse; the eastern sample is small; we chose several robustness checks after the first results.
bird migration · phenology · first arrival date · migration distance · temperature sensitivity · climate change · Chronicles of Nature Calendar · Russia · long-distance migrants · CRU TS · GBIF
References
13- usesdoi:10.5281/zenodo.3607556
Chronicles of Nature Calendar v1.0.5: source of all bird first-arrival and first-song dates (zip bundled unchanged).
- usesdoi:10.1038/s41597-020-0376-z
Data paper that describes the Chronicles of Nature Calendar database and its quality flags.
- usesdoi:10.1038/s41597-020-0453-3
CRU TS v4 monthly temperature used for site temperature windows.
- usesdoi:10.1111/geb.12709
Literature migration class (long- and short-distance) of European bird species.
- usesdoi:10.5061/dryad.n6k3n
Data of Storchova & Horak 2018 (read via the traitdata R package copy).
- supportsdoi:10.1111/1365-2656.12612
Meta-analysis that found smaller temperature sensitivity and smaller advance of spring migration in long-distance migrants; our western-site result agrees.
- doi:10.3390/ani13193031
Tatarstan study of 31 species that found no clear effect of migration distance; our multi-site test gives a different result west of 60 E.
- doi:10.1126/science.1126119
Reported fast advance of spring arrival in long-distance migrants at European observatories.
- doi:10.1038/35077063
Arrival date constrains climate adjustment in a long-distance migrant.
- doi:10.1073/pnas.1305533110
Earlier community-level phenology analysis with Chronicles of Nature data.
- doi:10.1038/s41558-020-00967-7
Continent-wide phenological shifts across trophic levels with Chronicles of Nature data.
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First-arrival dates depend on population size; main limitation of our trend result.
- Station temperature explains 1953–2025 trends in spring plant phenology at Japanese weather stations, but animal first-detection dates and autumn leaf dates became later than temperature predicts sci:sha256:36e60936c071be9d4b3c6da9b602265e2e7d9cd7afb88b52a30ee46f10e2710f
SCI study that found animal first-detection dates in Japan became later than temperature predicts; related to our residual-trend result.
Cited by
1 publicationPublic catalog entries on Sciscape.
- Bird species that winter farther south had weaker first-arrival responses to local spring temperature at 133 former-USSR sites west of 60° E (1961–2017), and mean arrival day did not explain this
[Legacy relation: reproduces] Same database and question with a literature migration class and mixed models; we reproduce its weaker response of long-distance migrants west of 60 E and the null result east of 60 E with an independent continuous GBIF winter latitude and species-level meta-regression, and we add the arrival-day, window and isotherm tests.