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Abstract

Migratory animals are threatened by human-induced global change. However, little is known about how stopover habitat, essential for refuelling during migration, affects the population dynamics of migratory species. Using 20 years of continent-wide citizen science data, we assess population trends of ten shorebird taxa that refuel on Yellow Sea tidal mudflats, a threatened ecosystem that has shrunk by >65% in recent decades. Seven of the taxa declined at rates of up to 8% per year. Taxa with the greatest reliance on the Yellow Sea as a stopover site showed the greatest declines, whereas those that stop primarily in other regions had slowly declining or stable populations. Decline rate was unaffected by shared evolutionary history among taxa and was not predicted by migration distance, breeding range size, non-breeding location, generation time or body size. These results suggest that changes in stopover habitat can severely limit migratory populations.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Studds, CE and Kendall, BE and Murray, NJ and Wilson, HB and Rogers, DI and Clemens, RS and Gosbell, K and Hassell, CJ and Jessop, R and Melville, DS and Milton, DA and Minton, CDT and Possingham, HP and Riegen, AC and Straw, P and Woehler, EJ and Fuller, RA
Keywords:	migratory shorebirds, Yellow Sea, stopover habitat
Journal or Publication Title:	Nature Communications
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:	2041-1723
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14895
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2017 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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