Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology

Catherine Sheard (), Montague H. C. Neate-Clegg, Nico Alioravainen, Samuel E. I. Jones, Claire Vincent, Hannah E. A. MacGregor, Tom P. Bregman, Santiago Claramunt and Joseph A. Tobias
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Catherine Sheard: University of Bristol
Montague H. C. Neate-Clegg: University of Oxford
Nico Alioravainen: University of Oxford
Samuel E. I. Jones: University of Oxford
Claire Vincent: University of Oxford
Hannah E. A. MacGregor: University of Oxford
Tom P. Bregman: University of Oxford
Santiago Claramunt: Royal Ontario Museum
Joseph A. Tobias: University of Oxford

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract An organism’s ability to disperse influences many fundamental processes, from speciation and geographical range expansion to community assembly. However, the patterns and underlying drivers of variation in dispersal across species remain unclear, partly because standardised estimates of dispersal ability are rarely available. Here we present a global dataset of avian hand-wing index (HWI), an estimate of wing shape widely adopted as a proxy for dispersal ability in birds. We show that HWI is correlated with geography and ecology across 10,338 (>99%) species, increasing at higher latitudes and with migration, and decreasing with territoriality. After controlling for these effects, the strongest predictor of HWI is temperature variability (seasonality), with secondary effects of diet and habitat type. Finally, we also show that HWI is a strong predictor of geographical range size. Our analyses reveal a prominent latitudinal gradient in HWI shaped by a combination of environmental and behavioural factors, and also provide a global index of avian dispersal ability for use in community ecology, macroecology, and macroevolution.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16313-6

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