CAnMove symposium: 'The Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration'

Symposium participants receive some juggling therapy at the symposium barbecue (photo: Arne Andersson)

Last week we held a CAnMove symposium in 'The Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration' at Lund University. We had 19 international speakers, including 4 CAnMovians, who presented theoretical and empirical research into partial migration in a diverse range of taxa, including neotropical birds, salmonid fish and ungulates. Partial migration, where just a fraction of a population migrates, is thought to be extremely widespread in nature. As technology advances and our knowledge of animal movement patterns increases, the prevalence of partial migration amongst migratory species becomes even more striking. Some of the highlights of the meeting included Mark Hebblewhite's (University of Montana) plenary talk about partial migration in ungulates. His group has shown that human activities have altered the cost/benefit balance of the resident strategy by reducing predation risk from wolves in areas with human settlements. We also had some illuminating theory talks by Per Lundberg and Anders Hedenstrom (Lund University), Allison Shaw (Princeton University), and our second plenary speaker, Hanna Kokko (Australian National University). Hanna gave an excellent introduction to the theory of partial migration, and showed that behaviour that is optimal for the individual is not always optimal when scaled to a population level.


Other highlights included Christian Skov (Danish Technical University), whose work highlights the importance of predation as a factor influencing conditional migratory behaviour in multiple populations of freshwater fish, bream. Courtney Conway (University of Arizona) also took a cross-population approach to test hypotheses of partial migration in burrowing owls in North America, and Alice Boyle (University of Western Ontario) presented a fascinating series of research projects which investigated the 'limited foraging opportunity' hypothesis both a a species- and community-level in neotropical birds.


All in all it was an informative and fun symposium, with a diversity of research questions in the area of partial migration, including the role of culture and learning, animal personality, and parent-offspring conflict in partial migration, which really highlights the breadth of activity in this resurgent field. We ended with discussions and a CAnMove barbecue. Many of the participants took advantage of juggling therapy from Marcus Ljungqvist to wind down from the symposium. Was he successful at teaching juggling to scientists? Well, at least partially ...


We will now begin work on a thematic edition of Oikos on the 'Ecology & Evolution of Partial Migration' which will include some of the exciting research we heard about at the symposium. Watch this space for more details!


/Ben