ArticleNature communications2023
Migrating mule deer compensate en route for phenological mismatches.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Heart rate biologgers reveal individual-specific energy landscapes for mule deer.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- Timing of rainfall influences juvenile and yearling mass of a long-lived herbivore in a semiarid environment.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Drivers of spring migration phenology in Rocky Mountain elk.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Consistent Individual Differences and Plasticity in Migration Behaviour of Three North American Ungulates.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Multiple drivers of spring migration timing for red deer over the past 16 years in northern Europe.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A protocol for assessing bias and robustness of social network metrics using GPS based radio-telemetry data.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Individual variation in life-history timing: synchronous presence, asynchronous events and phenological compensation in a wild mammal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Billions of animals migrate to track seasonal pulses in resources. Optimally timing migration is a key strategy, yet the ability of animals to compensate for phenological mismatches en route is largely unknown. Using GPS movement data collected from 72 adult female deer over a 10-year duration, we study a population of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in Wyoming that lack reliable cues on their desert winter range, causing them to start migration 70 days ahead to 52 days behind the wave of spring green-up. We show that individual deer arrive at their summer range within an average 6-day window by adjusting movement speed and stopover use. Late migrants move 2.5 times faster and spend 72% less time on stopovers than early migrants, which allows them to catch the green wave. Our findings suggest that ungulates, and potentially other migratory species, possess cognitive abilities to recognize where they are in space and time relative to key resources. Such behavioral capacity may allow migratory taxa to maintain foraging benefits amid rapidly changing phenology.
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