Migratory species, as a biological and ecological topic, are taxa whose life cycles include regular, cyclical, and predictable movements between distinct geographic regions, typically driven by seasonal variation in resource availability, breeding opportunities, or environmental conditions. These movements can occur across latitudinal, altitudinal, or aquatic gradients and span scales from local to transcontinental. Research on migratory species focuses on navigation mechanisms (e.g., celestial, geomagnetic, olfactory cues), energetics and physiology of long-distance movement, connectivity between populations across ranges, and the consequences of migration for gene flow, community structure, ecosystem processes, and vulnerability to anthropogenic pressures along migratory routes.
China's tidal flats feed people and mollusk-eating migrating shorebirds such as red knots, great knots and Eurasian oystercatchers. Under good management, these flats used for aquaculture markedly reduce human disturbance ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 11, 2025
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Just north of the great Serengeti wildebeest migration, a smaller migration across the Mara ecosystem is collapsing. New maps published in the Atlas of Ungulate Migration reveal the dramatic impact of fencing on the long-distance ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 4, 2025
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Loggerhead turtles are able to sense Earth's magnetic field in two ways, but it wasn't clear which sense the animals use to detect the magnetic field when navigating using the magnetic map they are born with. Now researchers ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 20, 2025
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Every spring, the familiar songs of Wood Thrushes and warblers return to the parks and backyards of eastern North America. But their journey begins far to the south—in the lush, remote forests of Central America that sustain ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 19, 2025
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Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies fly across Texas skies on their 3,000-mile journey to the mountains of central Mexico. The state's position in the center of the migratory route makes it critical to the species' ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 13, 2025
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New research from the Durham University Biosciences Department and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has revealed that many migratory birds are finding it harder to prepare for their long journeys as European summers ...
Ecology
Nov 11, 2025
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For the first time in more than a century, migrating salmon have climbed close to the headwaters of the Klamath River's most far-flung tributaries, as much as 360 miles from the Pacific Ocean in south-central Oregon. The ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 6, 2025
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This year's whale season offered spectacular encounters with these majestic giants as thousands of whales migrated along Australia's east coast.
Plants & Animals
Oct 22, 2025
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One of the enduring ichthyological mysteries is how migratory fish know when it is time to move from their winter to summer habitats. The ability to tell when the seasons are changing is crucial for a wide range of major ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 22, 2025
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Hurricane Idalia blew a flamboyance, or flock, of 300–400 flamingos that was likely migrating between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba off course in August 2023 and unceremoniously deposited the birds across a wide swath of ...
Ecology
Oct 15, 2025
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