Does weather drive habitat use and movement of a nonmigratory bird?

• DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.4407
• Publication Date: 2023-02-09T04:58:11Z
• Authors: L. K. Neumann; C. A. Davis; S. D. Fuhlendorf; R. D. Elmore
• Keywords: Weather station; Land Cover

Abstract Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of weather extremes (e.g., extreme heat drought), which will likely affect wildlife species in significant ways. Maintaining landscape heterogeneity has been suggested as a potential conservation strategy buffer animals from extremes. Because animal movement influences survival population connectivity, understanding space use response shifts useful for wildlife. Nonmigratory are be more negatively affected by climate because they have limited ability disperse find resources. We studied Northern Bobwhite ( Colinus virginianus ; hereafter, bobwhite) understand how alters habitat nonmigratory across landscape. collected telemetry locations on bobwhite western Oklahoma during 2019–2020 paired these data with meteorological vegetation data. analyzed at two temporal scales—hourly 12‐h paths. At hourly scale, we tree cover use, shrub normalized difference index (NDVI) using generalized or linear‐mixed models. calculated three different metrics: cumulative distance, net displacement, sinuosity each metric separately found that used denser higher NDVI values air temperature increased conjunction solar radiation. average wind speed was high well when were low. The interaction between variability influenced movement. areas variance moved farther mean temperatures >0°C than low variance. When ≤0°C, had little effect distance bobwhite. Our findings show some types conditions together Managing solution may future.