TY - JOUR T1 - Eco-evolutionary drivers of avian migratory connectivity JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2022.07.04.497586 SP - 2022.07.04.497586 AU - Niccolò Fattorini AU - Alessandra Costanzo AU - Andrea Romano AU - Diego Rubolini AU - Stephen Baillie AU - Franz Bairlein AU - Fernando Spina AU - Roberto Ambrosini Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/04/2022.07.04.497586.abstract N2 - Understanding how individuals redistribute after migration assists in the conservation and management of mobile species, yet the eco-evolutionary drivers of migratory connectivity remain unclear. Taking advantage of an exceptionally large (~150,000 individuals, 83 species) and more-than-a-century long dataset of bird ringing encounters, we investigated determinants of avian migratory connectivity on both short- and long-distance migrants. Most species exhibited significant connectivity likely due to the large intraspecific variability in migration strategies, which often led to the identification of distinct migratory populations. Migratory connectivity was strongly predicted by geography, especially migration distance, but it was evolutionary labile and weakly influenced by biological traits due to flexibility in migratory behaviour. By unravelling determinants of migratory connectivity we improve knowledge about the resilience of migrants to ecological perturbations. Also, our population-level analysis provides a critical tool to inform transboundary conservation and management strategies by explicitly considering the large intraspecific variability of avian migration.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -