A stable isotope (δ 2H) approach to deriving origins of harvested woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) taken in France

Autor: Keith A. Hobson, Yves Ferrand, François Gossman, Claudine Bastat, Steven L. Van Wilgenburg
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Zdroj: European Journal of Wildlife Research. 59:881-892
ISSN: 1439-0574
1612-4642
DOI: 10.1007/s10344-013-0742-7
Popis: A crucial but elusive aspect of the effective conservation and management of migratory birds is the determination of which regions or habitats contribute to the recruitment of juvenile birds into the adult breeding population or, in the case of hunted species, the annual harvest. Although ring recoveries have provided important information for several game species, limitations of this approach include the bias to only marked populations and the tremendous scale of effort required to recover enough individuals. Here, we explored the use of an intrinsic marker, the stable hydrogen isotope composition of feathers (δ 2Hf) of juvenile woodcock (Scolopax rusticola), as a means of assigning birds to natal origin using a woodcock-specific δ 2Hf isoscape. We applied this approach to 987 juvenile woodcock during the winters of 2005–2006 and 2006–2007, and 1875 juvenile woodcock sampled during autumn migration of 2005 and 2006. We used a likelihood-based assignment approach to determine origins from four regions. Considering only the feather isotope data, the majority (50 %) were assigned to origins in the Baltic—Western European Russia region (including western Russia) and 44 % assigned to central European origins. Few (6 %) were considered residents in France and
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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