Insights into birds' migration routes

By tracking hybrids between songbird species, investigators have found that migration routes are under genetic control and could be preventing interbreeding. The research, which is published in Ecology Letters, was conducted using geolocators that, like GPS, record the position of a bird and allow its long distance movement to be tracked.

Compared with their parents, hybrids exhibited increased variability in their migratory routes: some used intermediate routes across less suitable areas, while others used the same routes as one parental group on fall migration and the other on spring migration.

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