Drivers of Golden-winged Warbler Population Decline
You can support this important research by donating to the Forest Wildlife Research Fund below!
|
The Golden-winged Warbler, a neotropical migrant experiencing significant range-wide population decline, is currently under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act. However, more information is needed on overall population trends before a listing decision can be made. One gap in our knowledge is of annual survival of female Golden-winged Warblers. Females are typically more elusive than males, and are rarely ever resighted or recaptured after initial banding. This leaves us with a lot of questions – Where do they go? How does their survival compare to that of males? Previously, we were unable to address these questions with visual observations alone, but with the development of new VHF-coded NanoTags that are small enough to be safely carried on the backs of Golden-winged Warblers and powerful enough to transmit frequencies for over a year, we hope to catch a glimpse of how well these females are surviving and where exactly they disperse to over time. Our goal is to return to the same deployment locations in subsequent breeding seasons and use radio telemetry to track, and hopefully visually detect, our tagged warblers.
|
A female Golden-winged Warbler. Females are typically low foragers and dwellers. Because of this, they are rarely detected in point count surveys and have a virtually absent return rate. Photo sourced from anonymous photographer at eBird.
|
|
Since this species has two distinct breeding regions, the Great Lakes and the Appalachian Mountains, Amber Roth and the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group has amassed close to a dozen collaborators who will be deploying the same NanoTags throughout their range. Through our collaborative research, we aim to discover the return rates of both male and female Golden-winged Warblers across their breeding range, and in turn identify their annual survival and specific drivers of their population decline.
|
Due to the urgency and the size of this collaborative work, we are currently focusing our efforts on securing enough funding to allow this project to expand and continue. Donate to our UMaine Gift Account to help equip our small team of researchers with the gear and resources needed to help complete a successful spring in the field!
Jessica Hightower holds a male Golden-winged Warbler after affixing a NanoTag. Tags sit squarely on the bird's back with an antenna protruding off the tag.
|
Emily Filiberti holds a NanoTagged female Golden-winged Warbler. These NanoTags weigh less than 5% of the bird's body mass and emit coded VHF frequencies.
|
Liz Allocca and Doug Raybuck affix a NanoTag to the back of a male Golden-winged Warbler in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. NanoTags are glued to a leg-loop harness and are worn by birds in a similar fashion as a backpack.
Principal Investigators
|
Primary Funding Sources
|
|
|
Emily Filiberti and Ethan Bowen assemble a Motus station at the University of Wisconsin Lelah Starks Elite Foundation Seed Potato Farm. These Motus stations are able to detect our NanoTag frequencies and will supplement our ground tracking efforts.
|
Liz Allocca holds a male Golden-winged Warbler. This male is a member of our "control male" cohort. Control males will receive only color bands (no NanoTag) so we can assess the effects of NanoTags on annual survival.
|
Project Collaborators
|
University of Maine
Amber Roth Jessica Hightower Emily Filiberti Kurt Ongman University of Tennessee David Buehler Doug Raybuck Indiana University of Pennsylvania Jeff Larkin Sean Murphy Cam Fiss Kristin Bomboy Fort Drum, US Army Jeff Bolsinger Raymond Rainbolt University of Minnesota-Duluth Natural Resources Research Institute Alexis Grinde US Fish & Wildlife Service Michael Wells Andy Forbes |
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources
Kate Slankard Michael Patton North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Chris Kelly University of North Carolina-Wilmington D.J. McNeil Audubon North Carolina Aimee Tomcho Curtis Smalling Virginia Commonwealth University Lesley Bulluck Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources Sergio Harding University of Massachusetts-Amherst David King University of Cincinnati Ron Canterbury |
