Post provided by Emily Cohen

Red Knot migratory connectivity is studied with tracking technologies and colour band resighting. © Tim Romano
The seasonal long-distance migration of all kinds of animals – from whales to dragonflies to amphibians to birds – is as astonishing a feat as it is mysterious and this is an especially exciting time to study migratory animals. In the past 20 years, rapidly advancing technologies – from tracking devices, to stable isotopes in tissues, to genomics and analytical techniques for the analysis of ring re-encounter databases – mean that it’s now possible to follow many animals throughout the year and solve many of the mysteries of migration.
What is Migratory Connectivity?
One of the many important things we’re now able to measure is migratory connectivity, the connections of migratory individuals and populations between seasons. There are really two components of migratory connectivity:
- Linking the geography of where individuals and populations occur between seasons.
- The extent, or strength, of co-occurrence of individuals and populations between seasons.