Does weather drive habitat use and movement of a non-migratory bird?

Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of
weather extremes (e.g., extreme heat and drought), which will likely
affect wildlife species in significant ways. Maintaining landscape
heterogeneity has been suggested as a potential conservation strategy to
buffer animals from weather extremes. Because animal movement influences
survival and population connectivity, understanding animal space use and
movement in response to shifts in weather is useful for the conservation
of wildlife. Non-migratory species are predicted to be more negatively
affected by climate change because they have a limited ability to disperse
to find resources. We studied the Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus;
hereafter, bobwhite) to understand how weather alters habitat use and
movement of a non-migratory animal across a landscape. We collected
telemetry locations on bobwhite across western Oklahoma during 2019–2020
and paired these data with meteorological and vegetation data. We analyzed
the data at 2 temporal scales – hourly locations and 12-hour paths. At the
hourly scale, we analyzed tree cover use, shrub cover use, and normalized
difference vegetation index (NDVI) use using generalized or linear-mixed
models. At the 12-hour scale, we calculated three different movement
metrics: cumulative distance, net displacement, and sinuosity, and
analyzed each movement metric separately using generalized linear-mixed
models. We found that bobwhite used denser tree cover and higher NDVI
values as air temperature increased in conjunction with solar radiation.
Bobwhite used denser shrub cover as air temperature increased and average
wind speed was high as well as when air temperature and average wind speed
were low. The interaction between variability in vegetation and climate
influenced bobwhite movement. Bobwhite in areas with higher NDVI variance
moved farther when mean air temperatures were > 0°C than bobwhite
in areas with low NDVI variance. When mean air temperatures were ≤ 0°C,
NDVI variance had little effect on the cumulative distance moved of
bobwhite. Our findings show that some animals use different vegetation
types during different weather conditions and that variability in
vegetation on the landscape and weather together alters animal movement.
Managing for landscape heterogeneity is a solution that may buffer animals
from increased climate variability in the future.