Migration Patterns of Different Animals

Taxonomic patterns of
migration

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Migration is ubiquitous within all the major vertebrate groups, and  extremely widespread among the invertebrates. There seems to be no clear taxonomic pattern of migration, which suggests that migratory behaviour is a  commonly evolved response to periodic and predictable shifts in environmental conditions. Examples of migration proliferate throughout the animal kingdom, in charismatic mammalian fauna such as ungulates and whales (Hebblewhite and Merrill 2007, Rasmussen et al. 2007), in a plethora of avian species (Newton 2007), and among   shes (Brönmark etc al. 2014), crustacea (Groeneveld and Branch 2002), amphibians (Grayson and Wilbur 2009), and reptiles (Hays etial. 2002).

Mammals

Among the mammals, the ungulates perform the most visible migrations, and these are  extremely well documented. Perhaps the most famous ungulate migrations are the annual movements of species such as zebra and wildebeest that migrate in vast, mixed-species herds across the plains of Africa. However, ungulates at more  northerly latitudes also migrate, following the waves of  freshly grown vegetation that appear after the winter in the lowlands and  gradually spread northwards and to higher elevations through spring and summer. Young,  rapidly growing shoots provide more digestible forage than older vegetation, and following the green wave of spring means that migratory herbivores access better food than their sedentary relatives (Hebblewhite et al. 2008). Carnivorous predators that hunt ungulates are much less  likely to show migratory behaviour (with some exceptions, e.g. spotted hyena: Trinkel et al. 2004),  likely due to the necessities of maintaining social structure and defending territories.

Birds 

Birds are the best studied and  arguably the most iconic migrants, with a  spectacularly diverse array of migratory behaviours (Newton 2007). Our under-standing of the causes and consequences of avian migration is continuing at a rapid pace, fuelled by technical progression and innovation. One way in which bird migration is diverse is in respect to scale. At one end of the spectrum there are endurance migrants that travel great distances during their seasonal rights. Recent tracking of great snipe, Gallinago media, revealed that they make  extremely long and fast endurance   lights (4,300–6,800 km in 48–96 h), not  only over deserts and seas, but also over large expanses of suitable habitat (Klaassen et al. 2011). However, the world record for endurance    ight is held by the Alaskan bartailed god-wit,  Limosa lapponica baueri. This wader migrates 11,000  km from the Alaskan breeding grounds to wintering grounds on New Zealand. Moreover, they  non-stop    ight without rest for 8 days (Gill et al. 2009). Other extreme migratory behaviours include the high altitude journeys of bar-tailed geese, Anser indicus, over the Himalayas. These vertiginous    lights have been  recently tracked in great detail to shed light on this unusual strategy (Hawkes and Balachandran 2013).

 

Fish

Migration is  extremely widespread among   shes, and occurs in a diverse array of forms and for a number of functions, including feeding, breeding, and refuging from predators (Lucas and Baras 2001, Chapman B. B. et al. 2012a). Migratory behaviour in this group is often classi  ed into typologies based on the habitats between which individuals mi-grate. Oceanodromy concerns migrations that occur  solely in the marine environment, such as the vast seasonal migrations of Atlantic blue  n tuna, Thunnus thynnus, and the  daily vertical movements of herring, Clupea harnegus.  Conversely, migrations limited to freshwater are known as potamodromy, and are widespread across many groups (Brönmark et al. 2014), and include seasonal migrations from lakes into streams (Skov et al. 2008), or lateral migrations of   sh into    oodplains, which are well described from tropical and subtropical regions with dry and wet seasons. Further, many   sh species perform a diel horizontal migration, where they migrate from the littoral zone of lakes into offshore areas at dusk and then return to the littoral at dawn (e.g. Muska et  al. 2013). Perhaps the best-studied type of   sh migration is diadromy, where individuals migrate across the salt–freshwater barrier. Migration in the   shes has  traditionally received less research attention than in other taxa such as birds, most  likely due to the relative dif  culty in tracking individual movements over  potentially great distances beneath the water. However, as we will see in this chapter, many classic examples of migration come from the   shes, and as a group their patterns of migration are as diverse as the birds, and perhaps even more so.

Reptiles

Reptile migration is  largely limited to the oceanic migrations of turtles and the short-distance migrations of snakes and tortoises. Lizards, for the most part, adopt hibernation as an alternative strategy to overcome challenges associated with predictable seasonal changes to the environment. The best documented (and most spectacular) migrations of reptiles are the great marine journeys of sea turtles. In many cases turtles migrate between foraging and nesting grounds, often over exceptional distances (Akesson etal., Chapter 9). Leatherback turtles, Dermochelys coriacea, can range over thou-sands of kilometres to forage upon jellysh in distant waters before returning to nest on their natal beaches, whereas terrestrial migrations in reptiles are  typically on a much smaller scale. For example, giant land tortoises on the Galapagos Islands make elevational migrations driven by seasonal changes in food availability (Blake etal. 2012), and water pythons in Australia make migratory movements of up to 12 km to follow prey in the wet season (Mad-sen and Shine 1996).

Mollusca

The study of migration among the molluscs is still in its infancy, but is speculated to be quite widespread in this group (Semmens et al. 2007). Cephalopod migrations occur at all phases of their life history, from the passive drifting of eggs and larvae to diel vertical migrations, to long-distance (i.e. thousands of kilometres) adult migrations of animals to feed-ing and spawning grounds (O’Dor 1992, Semmenset al. 2007). These long-distance migrations are  mostly undertaken by ommastrephid squids in the pelagic zone, with coastal cephelapods such as octopods or loliginid squids migrating over smaller scales (tens to hundreds of kilometres).