ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2014
Environmental drivers of variability in the movement ecology of turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) in North and South America.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
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- A global dataset of spatiotemporal co-occurrence patterns of avian influenza virus-associated migratory birds.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Vulture Exclusion Halves Large Carcass Decomposition Rates and Doubles Fly Abundance.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Deep vs shallow: GPS tags reveal a dichotomy in movement patterns of loggerhead turtles foraging in a coastal bay.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Article
- ORTEGA v1.0: an open-source Python package for context-aware interaction analysis using movement data.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Cranes soar on thermal updrafts behind cold fronts as they migrate across the sea.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- GPS tracking analyses reveal finely-tuned shorebird space use and movement patterns throughout the non-breeding season in high-latitude austral intertidal areas.Movement ecology · 2023Article
- Exploring Descriptions of Movement Through Geovisual Analytics.KN - journal of cartography and geographic information · 2022Article
- Ontogenetic shifts from social to experiential learning drive avian migration timing.Nature communications · 2021Article
- DynamoVis 1.0: an exploratory data visualization software for mapping movement in relation to internal and external factors.Movement ecology · 2021Article
- Inclement weather forces stopovers and prevents migratory progress for obligate soaring migrants.Movement ecology · 2021Article
- Barrier crossings and winds shape daily travel schedules and speeds of a flight generalist.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Extreme events are more likely to affect the breeding success of lesser kestrels than average climate change.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Both short and long distance migrants use energy-minimizing migration strategies in North American herring gulls.Movement ecology · 2020Article
- Maxent modeling for predicting the spatial distribution of three raptors in the Sanjiangyuan National Park, China.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Article
- Static landscape features predict uplift locations for soaring birds across Europe.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Evidence of niche differentiation for two sympatric vulture species in the Southeastern United States.Movement ecology · 2019Article
- Towards an Integrated Science of Movement: Converging Research on Animal Movement Ecology and Human Mobility Science.International journal of geographical information science : IJGIS · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 8 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Variation is key to the adaptability of species and their ability to survive changes to the Earth's climate and habitats. Plasticity in movement strategies allows a species to better track spatial dynamics of habitat quality. We describe the mechanisms that shape the movement of a long-distance migrant bird (turkey vulture, Cathartes aura) across two continents using satellite tracking coupled with remote-sensing science. Using nearly 10 years of data from 24 satellite-tracked vultures in four distinct populations, we describe an enormous amount of variation in their movement patterns. We related vulture movement to environmental conditions and found important correlations explaining how far they need to move to find food (indexed by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and how fast they can move based on the prevalence of thermals and temperature. We conclude that the extensive variability in the movement ecology of turkey vultures, facilitated by their energetically efficient thermal soaring, suggests that this species is likely to do well across periods of modest climate change. The large scale and sample sizes needed for such analysis in a widespread migrant emphasizes the need for integrated and collaborative efforts to obtain tracking data and for policies, tools and open datasets to encourage such collaborations and data sharing.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.