Very excited to have a new paper in early view on using the new IsoMAP tool to develop stable hydrogen isotope (dD) feather base maps for pied flycatchers in Europe. We used this awesome tool to develop and validate long-term average and year specific isoscapes, and also examined the effects of random site variation. We found that the most accurate maps were those that were developed from long-term dD averages and did not included random site variation. Also, for the first time, we present an analysis of the relationship between annual variation in precipitation dD and those in bird feathers with a large repeated measures data set. We found that variation in precipitation only explains about 20% of the variation within individuals between years. Lastly, we used the base maps to assign wintering birds from Ghana to breeding possible locations (map below). Our paper is now in early view in the Journal of Avian Biology (contact me for reprint). Many thanks to my wonderful co-authors, Christiaan Both and Pete Marra, and all of the excellent researchers that provided feathers for the analysis.
flycatcher photo (c) Steve Garvie
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