Moonlight synchronous flights across three western palearctic swifts mirror size dependent prey preferences
type: Item
instance of: data set
description: Abstract Recent studies have suggested the presence of moonlight mediated behaviour in avian aerial insectivores, such as swifts. At the same time swift species also show differences in prey (size) preferences. Here, we use the combined analysis of state-of-the-art activity logger data across three swift species, the Common, Pallid and Alpine swifts, to quantify flight height and activity responses to crepuscular and nocturnal light conditions. Our results show a significant response in flight heights to moonlight illuminance for Common and Pallid swifts, while a moonlight driven response is absent in Alpine swifts. Swift flight responses followed the size dependent altitude gradient of their insect prey. We show a weak relationship between night-time illuminance driven responses and twilight ascending behaviour, suggesting a decoupling of both crepuscular and night-time behaviour. We suggest that swifts optimise their flight behaviour to adapt to favourable night-time light conditions, driven by light responsive and size-dependent vertical insect stratification and weather conditions. You are required to cite both the Zenodo data repository as well as the BioRXiv pre-print when using this data, as: Hufkens et al. 2023.Moonlight synchronous flights across three western palearctic swifts mirror size dependent prey preferences. doi://10.5281/zenodo.7814214 Hufkens et al. 2023.Moonlight synchronous flights across three western palearctic swifts mirror size dependent prey preferences. bioRxiv 2023.04.25.538243; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.25.538243 Use This is a deposited version of the releases on Github. Either download this Zenodo repository or clone or download the project Github zip file. git clone https://github.com/bluegreen-labs/swift_lunar_synchrony.git Unzip the downloaded data if required. The repository is an `R` project and can be opened in RStudio, which will set the correct relative path. Data structure analysis Analysis data is saved as compress…
publication date: 2023-04-21T00:00:00Z
author: Koen Hufkens
author: Christoph M. Meier
author: Ruben Evens
author: Josefa Arán Paredes
author: Hakan Karaardiç
author: Stef Vercauteren
author: Ann van Gysel
author: James W. Fox
author: Carlos M. Pacheco
author: Luis F. Pascoal da Silva
author: Sandra Fernandes
author: Pedro Henriques
author: Gonçalo Elias
author: Luís T. Costa
author: Martin Poot
author: Lyndon Kearsley
Zenodo ID: 7814214
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7814214
copyright license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
dataset version identifier: v1.0
MaRDI profile type: Dataset
description: Dataset published at Zenodo repository.