Santa Cruz Island Reserve

14 Jan, 04 AM - 16 Jan, 07 AM

Hummingbirds have a unique foraging life style requiring frequent nectar feedings to maintain high energetic needs. Thus they depend on and provide pollination service to native plants in their habitats. With an energetic ?life on the edge? coupled with specific habitat requirements for breeding, wintering, and migration movement corridors, climate change and human-caused habitat alteration is of special concern for hummingbirds and their ecological communities. However, the scientific literature is lacking for many important aspects of hummingbird biology including population structure, genetic diversity, migration, and impacts of diseases. Two sympatric partial migrant hummingbird species are present in California ? and both reside on the Channel Islands. "Partial migrant" means that some members of the species migrate, while others remain in an area year-round. Recent improvements in methods of capture and noninvasive sampling provide an excellent mechanism to test hypotheses about differences in ecology, health, population structure and genetic diversity in island vs. mainland hummingbirds. This research involves the field study and laboratory analyses for two partial migrant species in California, Anna?s Hummingbird (Calypte anna; ?Anna?s?) and Allen?s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin; ?Allen?s?). Objectives include testing 1) whether migratory and sedentary populations are genetically distinct and how populations are substructured in relation to geography and landscape features and 2) if presence of a disease syndrome observed in mainland California hummingbirds is present on the islands and whether the disease is associated with migratory strategy. Migratory Allen?s and Anna?s are hypothesized to be genetically distinct from their sedentary conspecifics. Anna?s Hummingbirds with pox-like disease syndrome are hypothesized to more likely be migrators due to factors possibly including lowered immunity imposed by stresses of migration and higher exposure to insect vectors of disease. A synergy of specialized capture techniques, molecular genetics, and stable isotope analysis will be used to address these questions then produce a predictive model for distributions and abundance of migrating and sedentary populations given current forecasts for climate change. We maintain a UC Davis IACUC protocol to cover this work (#12260; exp 5/12/2012). CDFG (exp 3/24/2012), USFWS (exp 3/31/2012), and BBL Master bander (exp 3/31/2014) permits are current.

Visit #27040 @Santa Cruz Island Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 24633 | Research

Hummingbird Health, Ecology, and Genetics

faculty - University of California, Davis

Reservation Members(s)

Holly Ernest Jan 14 - 16, 2012 (3 days)
Holly Ernest Jan 14 - 16, 2012 (3 days)

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