Pinning down an ever moving target - establishing when and where migrant shorebird populations are bottlenecked

Abstract

Whether one is interested in the evolutionary ecology of migrating animals, trying to understand their habitat choice and the population consequences of such choices, or whether one is interested in helping conservation or recovery projects with solid ecological knowledge, trying to pin down when and where populations are limited is critical. In our talk we will try to review our attempts to establish when and where migrant shorebird populations are bottlenecked, building on the long-term demographic efforts on red knot and bar-tailed godwits around the world and the concurrent attempts to understand the ecological drivers of variations in survival and recruitment. We will also try to explain how the use of sequences of sites in the course of an annual cycle, given sufficient flexibility at the level of individuals or populations, may be an asset rather than a liability.