Welcome to the American Ornithological Society 2018 Annual Conference. We are pleased to have you join us at the lovely Hilton El Conquistador Resort in Tucson, AZ.
Stable hydrogen isotope methods for tracking animal movement and migratory connectivity are widely used yet often produce low resolution assignments. Incorporating prior knowledge of abundance, distribution or movement patterns can ameliorate this limitation, but data are lacking for most species. We demonstrate how observations reported by citizen scientists can be used to develop robust estimates of species distributions and to constrain isotopic assignments. We developed a Bayesian framework to refine isotopic estimates of migrant animal origins conditional on species distribution models constructed from citizen scientist observations. To illustrate this approach, we analyzed the migratory connectivity of three migratory rails. Citizen science observations enabled both estimation of sampling bias and construction of bias-corrected species distribution models. Conditioning isotopic assignments on these species distribution models yielded comparably high-resolution assignments. Our study demonstrates extensive data from organized citizen science monitoring programs are especially useful for improving isotopic assignments of migratory connectivity in birds, which can ultimately lead to better informed management decisions and conservation actions.
