Stop Over

Successful completion of migration requires an enormous amount of energy. Because of their small size, Neotropical migrants are unable to store the required food resources and therefore must stop periodically to refuel. When choosing stopover sites, migrants must assess the availability of food while considering the potential costs of competition and predation. Although a multitude of studies examine correlations between stopover site selection and these important agents of selection, few have tested these correlations using rigorous experiments to test among the alternative.  Currently we are developing experimental approaches to separate among sources of variation in stopover decisions with the hope of identifying the primary factors determining stopover site selection in Neotropical migrants.