A good wildlife management plan must include information on their migratory processes if the conservation of species, particularly endangered species, is to be improved. In the marine environment, for example, regulating fishing activity in certain wintering areas could improve and complement conservation and protection measures carried out along the breeding grounds. These are some of the conclusions of the study featured on the cover of the journal Diversity and Distributions and led by experts from the Seabird Ecology Lab of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.
The new study analyses one of the largest and most comprehensive databases ever compiled on the migratory behaviour of Cory's shearwater. These data include up to 1,346 migratory movements of 805 individuals from 34 breeding colonies of three closely related Cory's shearwater species: the Mediterranean Cory's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), the Atlantic Cory's shearwater (C. borealis) and the Cape Verde shearwater (C. edwardsii). This is the first paper to assess the migratory behaviour and environmental preferences throughout the breeding range of these three species. The study, which provides a broad and comprehensive view of the migratory behaviour of these taxa, results from the scientific collaboration of up to 12 research teams from seven countries around the world.
Studying migratory connectivity to improve protection
Migratory seabirds spend most of their lives at sea; this is the case of the Cory's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) cited in the study. Knowing the wintering areas - with all the existing connections with the different breeding areas - is a key factor in establishing conservation measures and designing efficient marine protected areas (MPAs). In these migratory species, the measure of the interconnection between the different breeding populations and the wintering populations is known as migratory connectivity.
The new study combines the estimation of migratory connectivity with the environmental habitat preferences of up to three Cory's shearwater species. "The results obtained help us to understand not only how the three species migrate and behave in wintering areas, but also how this migratory behaviour may have played a role in the evolutionary segregation of the three taxa", says Raül Ramos, associate professor at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the Faculty of Biology.
